Inferno
by Dim Aldebaran
Summary: There are some things to be left untouched: but Artemis is the sort not just to touch them, but to steal them and make them his own. Unfortunately, he is not the only one with this mentality. AFOFC. Light angst, dry humor, and a very frustrated Artemis.
1. Chapter 1

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter One

**:i:**

He had had toast and marmalade for breakfast every morning since he was three, and Darjeeling since he was four. The only variety was the _type_ of marmalade; he had preferred orange as a child, but now it was too bitter for him. Apple was an eccentric delicacy: but cranberry, perhaps, was his favorite at the present, even if he had to special order it from Maine. The tartness contrasted beautifully with life in general.

The bittersweet lingered in his mouth long after he downed the last of the tea. He briefly considered calling Juliet up to take care of the mess, but decided to do it himself. She was probably still asleep, and awakening Sleeping Beauty was a task best left to Butler this early in the morn.

Recently, he had been getting his own toast in the morning. Dom, though still an early riser, was aging. Aging gracefully, perhaps, but still aging. For something as petty as toast, Artemis felt he could brave the kitchens himself.

The dishwasher, however, was another case entirely. The dishwasher was not as genius-friendly as the toaster.

He smiled a bit to himself. To think Artemis Fowl might do the dishes! Oh, the horror…

He took the trip down to the kitchens and set them in the sink, gently, as to not disturb houseguests several rooms over. On his way back up to his room, he paused on the grand staircase—stained glass windows shattered the dawn and made it its own, then abandoning it to its fate on the floor of Fowl Manor. There it lay, draped in weariness, bleeding from every fracture, every line.

It was a beautiful sight.

He ought to paint the scene; it would make an excellent birthday gift for Mother.

A smile tugged at his lips, bringing them into an easy crescent. A pity he was already painting something.

He watched the blood of the dawn seep into the floors for a time, then continued up the stairs, absently humming _Happy Birthday_ under his breath.

**:i:**

Butler came up at ten or so to announce the formal Fowl breakfast. He had every intention of bringing his Principle down to eat as soon as possible; there was a small party waiting for him downstairs, including several friends of the family.

These intentions faded when he stopped at the door. He could hear Mendelssohn drifting from the room like the scent of vanilla, warm and golden.

Artemis' habits were well known to him—he half-raised the boy, for Christ's sake. The young savant held that music was best live, especially something as rich and complex as classical. He only stooped to recordings when his own hands were full—in this case, with a paint brush.

He smiled to himself. Still not done? Artemis must be taking his time. "Breakfast, sir."

The door opened. Artemis' face, now lean and angular, beamed in that subtle, near-invisible way. "I thought I told you not to call me that anymore, Dom."

Butler followed Artemis' gesture into the room. It was a warm, sunny thing now—it faced south so sun streamed from the large windows at all times of the day and the moon at night, and had an impressive view of the lush grounds. A large grand piano occupied the left of the room, and his bed, little more than a cot, seemed little more than an afterthought on the right. Mendelssohn's _Songs Without Words_ rippled from his desk, next to his bed. In the center, the current focus of the room, was a large easel.

Artemis caught his glance and smiled that quicksilver smile of his, barely even there. "Not quite done yet. I can't seem to manage the expression." He walked over to the easel, picking up his oil palette. His brow creased.

Artemis had 'recovered' hundreds of paintings over the past few years, but he refused to have them just in passing on their way to the Louvre. His forgeries were near-perfect. His father's houseguests, many art connoisseurs, had never noticed the difference before.

His current project seemed to be giving him difficulty. When he had heard of this lost treasure, he made it a priority; they had it out of the Alberta mansion easily enough. Though normally Artemis had little love for Neoclassicists, Fragonard's light, flitting moments, reminiscent of Impressionism, were done with a startling realism that cameras could never quite capture.

The painting had already captured Artemis' heart. He called it _Girl in Solitude_; it showed a young woman leaning over a balcony, black hair tempted by the wind, as her eyes looked out, _out _of the picture, into a world she could only regard with envy. The melancholy of the piece, unlike the sheer giddiness of other Fragonards, struck him as very true.

Artemis was gazing into the eyes he had created, mouth puckered slightly. He looked almost boyish, a child pondering a missing piece to a puzzle.

"You can keep it," Butler said suddenly.

Artemis turned with an almost wistful expression on his face. "No, I couldn't."

"The world will survive without her," Butler commented, gazing at the girl. The tangled briars circling her reminded him of Juliet's unkempt rose garden; she had not cared for it since beginning her wrestling career.

"So will I. It belongs in the Louvre. We're sending it today."

His face gentled, and he took Artemis by the shoulder. "You want it. Consider it a birthday present to yourself."

Artemis stared at the painting. The girl stared back, blue eyes oddly accusing.

With a tight smile he turned to Butler. "I expect there's a party downstairs?"

Butler nodded.

"Then by all means, let us go." He moved towards the door.

"Artemis?"

He stopped and looked back.

"Don't forget it's your birthday."

The smile was genuine this time; small, but genuine. "I won't," he said quietly, and left.

Butler waited until he could no longer hear the footsteps.

The experts at the Louvre wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Artemis wouldn't look at it again until he knew it was in the Louvre, away from temptation.

Artemis would never guess that Butler would be capable of such a thing.

He smiled to himself, closing the door when the deed was done. _Happy Birthday, Artemis_.

**:i:**

When Mother announced a trip to Paris to celebrate his eighteenth birthday, Artemis found himself marveling at how things turned out. The painting would in all likelihood be displayed in two week's time, coinciding exactly on the date planned. If he didn't know better, he would say she knew of his recent exploit.

Father had gotten him a leather-bound journal, remembering his childhood habit of keeping a diary. Artemis had converted to encrypted computer entries by the age of nine, but he accepted the gift with a smile anyway.

Mother, other than the trip to Paris, had somehow managed to find a first edition _So Spoke Zarathustra_. Artemis promised he would read the original German text on the flight to Paris. She had scoffed at the idea of learning German in two weeks, but he easily proved her wrong.

Juliet, not present, had told them beforehand to watch her wrestling match that day. When they crowded into the media room, Artemis' eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling when she warbled out _Happy Birthday to Arty! _before her match. Her exuberant fans sang along. By the time it was over, Artemis was blushing so badly he excused himself, much to his parent's laughter.

Butler had had a sword custom-made, with 'Artemis Fowl' running down the blade in Gnommish. In the hilt he had had the likeness of Holly engraved—his parents thought it odd when he chuckled at the gift. Artemis leaned it against a wall in his room, promising to put it on display later.

Holly sent him a large box of lollipops—_You've been a good boy for five long years_, the card said. _I'm starting to get bored._

Mulch gave him a large chocolate coin with a hole in the middle. Artemis set it next to Holly's coin on his vanity, wondering what Holly had done when she learned of the Dwarf's gift, what she thought of that wry echo.

Foaly sent him _Fairy versus Mud Men Artwork_, a large book detailing why the fairies thought their artistic tastes were better. Artemis snorted at the thought that anyone could top Botticelli, but resolved to hide his affairs from the centaur better.

Opal, out of Howler's Peak no less, sent him a long letter detailing everything she'd do to him once she escaped. He stopped reading at the third page; even genii can get bored with repetition.

**:i:**

They were there as _Girl in Solitude_ was unveiled. Artemis found it difficult to enjoy the painting as he had in the solitude of Fowl Manor—no pun intended. In retrospect, he found his forgery more attractive; everything seemed so… hollow, so emotionless. He put it off to the bustling crowd, all trying to get a closer view of the latest Fragonard masterpiece. Perhaps his… infatuation with the painting was finally ending.

Butler saw the look on his face. "What is it?"

His face puckered. "It… doesn't look the same." The girl's eyes suddenly seemed flat, hardly the evocative things that had snared him so quickly.

Butler stared intently at the painting for several moments, then shrugged as only giants can. "I see no difference, sir."

Artemis sighed slightly. "Come. Let us go to the Renaissance section." That was where most of his… additions belonged. He felt a strange attachment to them now that they had been guests in Fowl Manor, almost maternal in his protective instincts.

Butler turned to leave, but Artemis hesitated, staring at the painting a few moments more. "I thi—"

The bodyguard pushed him aside as a girl tripped headlong into them. After scanning for threats, Butler held out his hand to the girl—only to see Artemis already had. He smiled as the girl took it.

"_Merci_," the girl said, slipping her hand out of Artemis'. She wore a pale orange burqa. Artemis noted the accent—she was not French, and most certainly not an Islamic immigrant to the country. American, in all likelihood.

Nor did she have the conservative Islamic attitude her burqa suggested—though he could not see her eyes, he knew she was staring through the veil.

But then she ducked her head down, and left, fading into the crowd.

Artemis found herself staring after her. The girl had obviously _tried_ to trip on him; patting down his pockets, he found nothing missing. The same for Butler. If a pickpocket, a failed one.

He ran over her physical characteristics again. He couldn't make out the eye color through the burqa, but her hands were that pale, blotchy red color that medium-toned skin gets without sunlight, and had seemed quite soft to him, either well-moisturized or never worked.

Butler had seen the irregularities as well; he took Artemis aside and asked permission to contact the Louvre security. Even without knowledge of Artemis'… donations, the Fowls were known benefactors of the French art museum.

"She's probably just a pickpocket," Artemis assured him. "No harm done."

Butler dropped the issue; Artemis promptly forgot it.

**:i:**

The thievery of _Girl in Solitude_ made headlines worldwide; not because it was particularly good, nor because its painter was a household name, but because something had been stolen from the _Louvre_, of all places—it could have very well been the Mona Lisa, the news anchors all gibbered.

Father prompted the issue at breakfast at a Parisian cafe: "_Girl in Solitude_'s been stolen." He sipped at his Earl Grey. "Amazing, only there for a day!"

Artemis hadn't downloaded the news onto his laptop yet; hearing this, he nearly spilled his tea on a passing waitress. "_Désolée, mademoiselle_," he murmured, looking up at the waitress. She acknowledged this with a giggle—Artemis found girls doing that with annoying regularity lately.

Mother laughed gently, but Artemis was in no mood: "The Fragonard?" he demanded. "Are you certain?"

Father looked puzzled—"Yes, why?"

His parents were both staring at him; Butler, next to him, gave him a careful nudge. "I rather liked that painting," Artemis replied glibly. "It's tragic someone had the mind to steal it."

Mother nodded. "Yes, well, at least it wasn't that one armless statue, of that woman—what is that called again, Arty?"

"_Venus de Milo_," Artemis said absently, thoughts elsewhere, in that land of possibilities only savants could visit—

"Yes, well, at least _that_ wasn't stolen… I always liked that sculpture, very pretty—Arty, where are you going?"

Artemis had gotten up. "Back to the hotel room," he said. "I—I'm not feeling well."

Butler stood to follow. Artemis hadn't looked that… _upset_ in years. Not since his last dealings with the fairies.

"No," he said sharply. He looked vaguely startled for a moment, then… apologetic, but then he turned to leave.

As he left, he could hear Mother's voice drifting through the Parisian café—"Timmy, do you think it's the food…?"

He didn't care.

Someone had stolen his painting.

He wanted it back.

**:i:**

I just went through and fixed a few typos people pointed out; thank you sooo much for the CC! Seriously, if anyone has any constructive criticism, that would be wonderful.

Thanks for reading! Again, CC is much appreciated. I have no beta for this, and I don't want to overbear poor Lily, who does _Descent _**and** all my oneshots. So.

CC!


	2. Chapter 2

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Two

**:i:**

In recent years, Butler had become a proficient gardener. It gave him a strange sense of peace, as escapisms are intended to do.

Artemis rarely brought him on missions anymore; instead, he carefully coordinated his thieveries with Juliet's wrestling schedule and his parents' myriad of honeymoons.

Of course, Artemis still used his expertise on missions. Recommended equipment and the like. Butler knew full well that Artemis could plan them on his own, but he was gracious for his inclusion.

Over the past few years, Artemis had curiously mellowed. In a sense, he had become altruistic. This shift had given him no visible angst, no deep inner conflict. It seemed natural, really, only natural…

Butler smiled to himself. He had been proud to serve the Artemis Fowl who had proved the world could be his if he so wished, had been proud to serve the Artemis who employed that seductive mix of blackmail and genius to secure his goals—but he was prouder still to serve this more reserved model.

Artemis still had his razor wit. He employed it readily enough: "Really, Dom, roses? I didn't know you were a romantic."

Bullshit, of course, but familiar bullshit. He smiled to himself, pruning back the blushing roses. If Foaly invented a time machine and told him six years ago that Artemis would joke around, he would consider it a plot to undermine their professional relationship.

Artemis looked around the garden; Butler had divided the grounds into a maze, of sorts, garden mazes, like those in the Loire Valley chateaus. They were quite charming, really.

Butler, however, was still Butler. In this section alone, Artemis had counted three security cameras, two remote-activated sonic grenades, a _very_ well-hidden weapons cache inside a creamy marble bench, and what he suspected to be a remote-controlled Cupid—the cherub had this terribly wicked grin on his face, and the arrow seemed slightly more sharp than the art of sculpture required.

Butler caught him eyeing the Cupid and grinned at the roses. "One shot only, of course."

Artemis studied the pudgy arm more closely. "Who designed this?"

Butler snapped off a particularly brilliant bloom and set it on the bench. To think an Uzi lay scarce three inches beneath… "I did."

Artemis looked faintly surprised—much more emotion than what he would have revealed five years ago. "Really, Dom? You must have been sneaking my engineering textbooks."

Butler nodded, plucking a particularly embarrassed one and setting it next to the former. "I hope you don't mind."

"Of course I don't! Really, this is a very efficient design. I'm impressed."

Flattered, Butler said nothing, continuing his meticulous pruning.

The silence reigned for a while; out of the corner of his eye, Butler could see Artemis' eyes flickering towards him.

"Is there something you'd like to say?"

Artemis pondered the growing pile of roses on the bench. "Nothing terribly important."

"It's the painting, isn't it?"

Artemis sat down next to the roses, fingering the soft petals. "You know me too well."

Butler waited until Artemis saw the need to continue: "I want to know who stole it." When Butler passed him another rose, he twirled it whimsically between his fingers. "I was rather fond of that painting. That was perhaps the closest I have come to temptation in many years…" He smiled to himself. "I suppose my fondness is rather Narcissistic. We look rather alike, the girl and I. Surely you've noticed."

Truth be told, Butler hadn't, but he nodded along. Artemis continued: "In any case, recovering this painting will be a fine adventure, no? We haven't done anything interesting lately."

Butler turned from the roses. "Is this a priority, then?"

Artemis nodded. "Check the security cameras for the Louvre, first. I want to see if there was any suspicious activity—people staring overly long and such."

Butler nodded. "Anything else?"

"I'd like blueprints for the garden, as soon as possible. I'd like to know what improvements you've made to the grounds."

Butler moved to pick up the bundle of roses; Artemis handed to them, wincing slightly when a thorn stabbed into his thumb.

"I'll tell Juliet that you sent them."

"Don't play the matchmaker for us."

Butler gestured towards the flowers; they were yellow.

"Yellow for friendship."

"Pink for hope," Artemis countered, noting their faint blush.

"Do you mind?"

Artemis smiled slightly. "Not really, no."

Butler smiled as well; after picking up his pruners, he left the scene.

Artemis pursed his lips, staring thoughtfully at Cupid. He recalled a certain relation of the cherub, and smiled. She was, after all, a wildly successful PI now—and she said so herself that she was getting bored.

He picked himself off the bench. The yellow rose garden was just outside Juliet's quarters, separated only by a bed of chrysanthemums. Juliet rarely came to Fowl Manor nowadays; usually, they rendezvoused wherever they were about to… work. He wondered if she missed Fowl Manor, or if her fame in wrestling really had replaced her former life. She had been growing increasingly antsy with their missions lately; was it time to let her go?

She was here now, though. Soon, she would be receiving yellow roses.

He pondered the garden briefly. Surely Butler had red roses somewhere—

It is quite fortunate he was Irish, and thus inherently lucky, since a bullet came whizzing by his head just as he moved to stand up.

He rolled to the side, coming up with an easy movement to pluck LEP sponges out of Cupid's ears. He jammed them into his own.

The nearest sonic grenade was on the nymph statuette, on her dangling pearl earring. On the other side of the garden.

Dom was already in the Manor.

The gun had been muffled.

Dom wasn't coming.

Artemis was not a fast runner.

He ran anyways.

He heard bullets whizzing around him—the would-be assassin was not a very good one—but they stopped as he dived behind the nymph statuette.

He hesitated before squeezing the earring. Some of the closer windows would be shattered, and much of the stained glass was one-of-a-kind—designed by him, for Mother's birthday.

The hesitation was enough; when he reached up to squeeze the earring, a bullet shattered his wrist. The spray of blood stained the nearby roses a brilliant crimson.

_Red roses for Juliet_, he thought absently—

—even if the bullets weren't heard, his scream was.

Through a haze, he could hear the sound of parting bushes, the assassin coming to finish him off, the thud of running steps as the Butler siblings came at full sprint, the near-silent hisses of the bullets, his own moans as his wrist pulsed out blood onto the ground, pouring like hot syrup.

Gunshots. Loud: unmuffled: Dom's. More steps; pursuit? He didn't know, didn't care. All there was was his wrist, bleeding out onto the ground, and he ripped his oxford shirt, moving to apply the tourniquet, but he couldn't with only one hand, his wrist bones were shattered, _oh God, I'll never play the piano again_—

Butler came to his side. Juliet, the sprightlier of the siblings, was undoubtedly chasing after the man who had stolen his soul. Wordlessly, he applied the tourniquet that he himself had been unable to tighten.

Even at age eighteen Artemis had a light build. Butler picked him up easily. "Shall I contact Holly?"

"Yes," Artemis gasped. He had never been injured like this before—it had been so long since anything of this magnitude had happened—

He often provided his expertise on Holly's more difficult cases, refusing to accept any payment—when she insisted, he turned around and donated it to the Red Cross. They were friends now, old friends, bonded by the same instinct for altruism—she would come and heal him, no matter what the cost.

He was set on Juliet's bed; the nearest. Numbly, he reached for his left wrist—the feel of the saturated tourniquet made him gag, and the distinctly metallic smell of blood made bile rise at this thought. It was sheer pride that kept him from vomiting over himself.

He heard the sound of the door, the sound of Butler: "She's coming."

Artemis said nothing for a few moments. When Butler reached for the tourniquet, he let him; he had tied it too tightly, and he didn't want to lose all hope for his hand.

"Dom?" A whisper, like the rustle of the rose petals.

"Yes?"

"I need to reconstruct the bones by the time she gets here."

Butler stared at him in shock. It was obvious Artemis could not stand the sight of blood. "Wait until she gets here."

"No." Point-blank refusal.

"Artemis—"

"Butler," Artemis snapped, "this is my hand. I know what I'm doing. Now, if you can kindly collect a surgical kit for me, I'd be much obliged."

Butler nodded mutely. Artemis hadn't used that tone of voice in years—excepting, of course, when the painting had been stolen.

When he returned, Artemis was sitting upright at Juliet's desk, left wrist laid on a bed of Kleenex as if crucified, but fallen from the cross. His face was grim. "Please undo the tourniquet," he said calmly.

**:i:**

By the time Holly had been come, Artemis had fainted from blood loss—but he had done most of the prep work. Foaly was able to guide Holly through the healing of shattered bones.

It was fortunate enough. Holly stood by anxiously while he slept—this had been the first time she had seen him in person in five years. She was startled by the change—he seemed kinder, more benevolent. It matched his recent actions. She could say, in all truthfulness, that she rather liked the change from the strange little boy who had kidnapped her all those years ago.

To keep the stress away—if the wrist hadn't healed properly, Artemis would skin her alive, for he was a leftie and still very much in love with the finer arts—she held a reunion, of sorts, with Juliet.

"Mulch watches you on TV," she said when the younger Butler came through the door. "I think he's a little infatuated."

Juliet laughed. "Tell him it would never work between us." She flipped her now infamous braid over her shoulder.

Butler had more serious issues on his mind. When Juliet caught sight of him, she sighed. "Is this how you welcome people home now? Assassination attempts?"

Butler stood silent. Juliet rolled her eyes and continued—she had that talent of making light of the more serious issues. "I have no goddamn idea who the assassin was. I didn't even see him." She paused. "Or her, for that matter. Or maybe it. Maybe it was a robot. I dunno. Whoever it was, he was a hell of a lot faster than me, and managed to scale the walls before I even got a glimpse." She plopped down on the bed, evidently not noticing the sleeping Artemis. "_I'd_ check the security cameras, if I were you."

A silence. "The feed was looped."

In the silence, Juliet cackled. "Ooh, boy! Artemis is going to be _pissed!_"

Holly agreed silently, though she couldn't help but ponder Juliet's Americanization. The idea of anyone hacking into the Fowl Manor network was a foreign one—and Artemis, despite it recent altruism, was still very proud of his security.

It was strange. It seemed as if the assassin had punched through the security like paper, but had fallen apart once he was actually doing the job. Really, it made no sense—and he had been able to escape perfectly fine, the plan for doing so obviously already made.

It would take Artemis to analyze the situation properly. It didn't make much sense to Holly, and she was a PI for Frond's sake.

Artemis stirred in his sleep. Idly, Holly wondered if it was because of his proximity to Juliet's rear.

"Who do you think he was?" Holly asked.

Juliet shrugged. "He'd been stealing plenty of paintings, granted, but we haven't left any trace behind ever. Fairy technology is very clean."

"Evidently not clean enough," Holly replied, frowning.

Juliet held her hands up in an expression of innocence. "_He_ was the one who planned them, not me. I just did what he told me to do."

"Do any jobs in particular stand out?"

Juliet grinned, reaching down and ruffling Artemis' hair as if he was still a boy. He smiled in his sleep, much to Juliet's delight. "Well, there was that time in Munich when he—"

Holly saw the expression on her face and knew that wasn't what she wanted. She turned to Butler: "Anything odd lately?"

Butler had been silent during this, watching his Principle sleep through the biggest upset since Opal Koboi: life had been comparatively peaceful these last five years. "_Girl in Solitude_ has been stolen."

A grin came to Holly's face as she realized the predicament, and then, like silver bells on a sleigh, she laughed, punctuated with: "And he—that was his latest—Foaly told me that—"

"Really," Artemis murmured, "it's not that funny."

Juliet squealed, leaning over and smothering Artemis in a very awkward hug. "You're alright!"

Artemis let her hug him for a few moments, then struggled. "Really, this is undignified—"

Juliet let go of him and bounced a bit on the bed. "Well, excuse me for being worried."

Holly smiled at the scene—but there was business to attend to. However much they joked, Artemis' life had been forfeit today for their mistakes.

They waited for Artemis to speak, then—it was habit, after all, albeit a habit that had lain dormant for five years.

Artemis sat up in bed. He reached for his wrist; all remained was ragged scar tissue, like a blooming pink carnation where he had slit his wrist open. He wriggled his digits experimentally; they moved perfectly. He flicked his wrist; and then he beckoned to Butler. He walked forward, head bowed.

"I would like to play my piano now."

"What are we going to do?" Juliet protested.

Artemis looked up from the bed. "I don't particularly care at the moment," he said. "Right now, I am going to play the piano."

**:i:**

Mm. Likey? CC always appreciated.

I was watching _Lion in Winter_ when I watched this, so I was a little distracted. Maybe that's a good thing. I dunno. Peter O'Toole is a damn good actor, granted, but I never thought him to be a muse.


	3. Chapter 3

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Two

**:i:**

Artemis came down from his room forty minutes later, having performed the Emperor Concerto to his satisfaction. He refused to have an audience, but Holly and Juliet crowded into the next room over, ears pressed against the wall. Neither were fans of classical music, so they departed to the kitchen, chattering over carrot sticks and fresh spring water.

Artemis found them running through all the old jokes:

"Have dolphin yet?" Holly cracked.

"In the freezer," Artemis replied, slipping through the ajar door, "next to the tenderloin."

Holly was sitting on the green-blue countertops, so they were at eye level. "Dolphin?" she asked, her legs dangling. "Freshwater or marine?"

Artemis selected a carrot from the bowl. "Check it yourself."

Holly looked at Juliet, leaning against the counter across from her—she shrugged, and pointed towards the meat freezer, to Holly's right

Disbelieving, Holly leaned over and opened; whatever it was she saw, it made her turn around very quickly and glare.

Artemis could only smile. "Juliet's suggestion," he replied. "I had… expected you to come on my birthday." When Holly opened her mouth, he waved his hand flippantly. "It's alligator. They have similar appearances, I am told."

Holly nodded, then cracked a smile. "That's an awful joke."

"I don't make 'jokes'."

"Apology accepted." Holly grinned, then slid off the countertop. She had to crane to see Artemis' face; really, it didn't seem _right _that he could be so tall. There should be some circulation problems with his brain or something.

Part of the problem was that she hadn't seen him in person since Certain Events. They had talked plenty of times via video conferencing, but it simply wasn't the same—sitting down talking to a four-inch version on her computer screen was considerably different than the adult-proportioned version before her now.

It was difficult to relate that insufferable boy with the young man with an easy smile on his face; not just in size, but in attitude. 'Normal' still wasn't a good word for him, but it was a slightly better fit than it was four years ago. At least it didn't slip over his shoulders to the floor; they were a little broad for that, now. He had an air of knowing not just books, but what he was going to do in life, and, perhaps most importantly, _why_.

She was quite proud of this new model, if not of his jokes.

Holly emerged from her reverie; Juliet was outlining the situation to Artemis:

"...and he was wearing this jumpsuit thing in black, the sort people in movie wear. Now, I'm flashy, but not that flashy. Definitely a guy."

"How do you know?" Artemis interrupted.

Juliet gave him a Look, and continued: "Also short—" seeing Artemis' mouth open "—but not that short. Light build. Caucasian, by his skin. Knew his way out of the gardens, and was able to climb the wall before I even got there. Damn fast runner, too, but I can't say much about his aim."

Artemis nodded, and turned to Holly. "What do you think?"

Holly shrugged. "Sounds like an amateur. Hired by someone without much of a budget, but could plan. Do you still have, er, connections?"

Artemis hated lying, so he didn't even try. "Yes, but if I'm not careful they'll alert Father."

Silence to that. Even Holly had an inkling of their relationship: Artemis had sworn legitimacy. In his mind, art thieveries were perfectly aboveboard; however, his father might not take things that way. Their relationship had ever been a delicate thing, and both were too prideful to bloody their hands picking up the shards of a shattered relationship.

"_I'll_ check into it," Holly said at last. It would be more difficult for her, snooping into affairs that weren't ever typed into a computer or captured by a camera would be difficult for a PI who relied on a combination of hacking and charisma.

Artemis shook his head—he, too, realized the impossibility of the situation. She could hardly walk up, the size of a truant fourth grader, and demand an interview regarding assassins for hire. "I can't ask that of you," he said. "I'll manage."

"Then I'm coming with you," Holly insisted.

"No—"

"**Yes**."

Artemis sighed, accepting this—but then, upon seeing the look on Juliet's face, he shook his head. "No, Juliet, Dom might need assistance going thro—"

Nothing could dissuade either. Artemis was not in the mood for argument; he'd rather have this matter solved quickly._ Girl in Solitude_ awaited.

**:i:**

Butler remained at Fowl Manor with the clean-up effort. He didn't mind it, really, he understood why Artemis would want younger, more capable people going with him to Dublin. He didn't think there'd be much danger considering Juliet would be there; though perhaps not following the Butler path, she was still a damn good fighter.

He had already dealt with the bloodied sheets on Juliet's bed. He had moved a beanbag chair to hide the worst of the bloodstains on the carpet; he washed away the ones on the grass with a quick hosing. The glass had been swept and cleaned; they now lay in the trash like butterflies, wings broken, lightless, but brilliant nonetheless, crowded as they were in a sort of mass graveyard.

However, the stained glass windows from which these jewels came could never be perfectly replaced; Artemis himself had designed these for his parents' anniversary a few years back, and were completely one-of-a-kind. Granted, there were only two panes of them, regaling the couple's bedroom, but they would be conspicuous losses; and Artemis could not afford to have this attempt on his life be noticed.

Artemis must have surely kept the design; if Butler could find it, he could order new ones from the handyman from Limerick, and pay whatever it would take to have them finished within three days—money would hardly be a problem, especially with trust 'on the line.

Other things remained to be dealt with. The blueprints for the garden would have to be found: the garden had already proved its worth to Artemis, and if having full knowledge of the garden meant Artemis' life, he could scarce afford to not bring it to his attention.

Also, he had to arrange contact with the Louvre, which wouldn't be too difficult of a thing considering how often the Fowl family donated without Artemis'… assistance in matters. There was even a Fowl Gallery, for Christ's sake. The officials would play along to the whim of a rich benefactor. What harm, after all, could it come to—it wasn't as if _they_ could do anything with a bunch of recordings!

Butler knew that, despite the recent attempt on his life, _Girl in Solitude_ would run forefront on his mind. It spoke to his pride, his love of fine arts, his newfound morals—whereas an assassin spoke only to petty vengeance, now buried beneath altruism and a strange sort of forgiveness. _Girl in Solitude_ was his current obsession—perhaps not to the intensity as his father had been, or to the extent as greed, but he could sense a fervor not seen since _Aurum est Potestas _was ever ready on his lips.

Butler had no doubt Artemis would find out who had tried to take his life, who had nearly taken his soul: he could only hope it was not related to _Girl in Solitude_, for if it was, Artemis might find himself traveling down a path he had sworn to abandon all those years ago.

The prospect did not please him at all: really, he was getting too old for all that.

**:i:**

Juliet insisted on driving; Artemis relented, thoughhe found himself in the singularly difficult position sitting next to Holly.

There hadn't been anything too bad about it, at first: they had not had a chance to catch up on each-other's doings yet, so they 'chatted'—Artemis found himself wincing at the term—until they reached the highway when they ran out of things to say.

Trouble brewing: Holly felt an imminent need to fill in the silences with bubbly nonsense. 'Bubbly' did not suit Holly at all, and Artemis felt quite disinclined to give her credit for trying. Why try to fake a normal young-adult relationship when neither of them were normal? He preferred her irritable side that consequently punched him in the nose than the form of her that had to keep finding things to say.

When he told her this, she took it rather badly, and attempted to revert to a certain custom involving a very humiliating form of bodily harm. Fortune intervened, for she was restrained by a seat-belt, and she was too terrified of Juliet's driving (who kept forgetting which side of the road to drive on in Europe) to unbuckle to impediment.

The stewing silence was much more comfortable to him. Things felt startling normal to him, suddenly—they were on a mission that had nothing to do with anything legal, the mood was fatalistic, and everyone—himself included—could hardly wait until the action started.

It was a strange desire, to _want_ mortal danger. He would say the need for it was especially strong only because of its deprivation in recent years, but that wasn't right either—he had always had a fascination for danger and its natural consequence: gold and the companionship of fascinating people. Over the past few years, he had had each, but without that adrenaline, it just wasn't as… real.

Watching the hills glide past the tinted windows, he could not help but muse upon this. The Fowl name had never been stronger, for Fowl was now to Ireland what China was to the world, and it had not just been Father's doing. His social bonds of 'friendship', as it was called, had never been deeper. He could name ten people off the top of his head he could trust with his very life, which, he was sure, no other aristocrat in the entire world could brag about.

But that terrifying thirst for danger remained… it seemed strange to divulge in it now, he, who had it all and have all the more if he merely reached out his hand, he would had fasted from criminality, he would had been without drink for so long. Why now? He could merely ignore the matter and bump security up another notch at Fowl Manor—or, better yet, hide the forgeries and call in Interpol to deal with it. In fact, he could probably just sit back and let Holly and Juliet handle it; they cared for his life enough, certainly.

And _Girl in Solitude_? Certainly, he was fond of that painting, but he was well aware it was pride and pride alone that wanted it back in the Louvre. He could pass it by, he could uncover that last Morisot he had heard rumors of in Shanghai, he could move on to other wonders. _Girl in Solitude_, he was sure, was not the last painting he would be infatuated with—nor had it been the first. _Eurydice,_ Jean-Baptise Camille, had left him breathless when it was first uncovered: the fine texture to her locks, the quixotic expression on her face as she stood before Hades and Persephone, the tired, uncaring curve to her pale hands, her shroud-like dress, had captured his heart as much as _Girl in Solitude_ had, if not more. After four weeks of paining over his forgery, he had passed it on to the Louvre; _Eurydice_ became the celebrated companion to _Orpheus and Eurydice_, and people flocked to see that ghost of a goddess fade before their eyes. The only reason _Girl in Solitude_ brought more desire to his mind was the fact it had been stolen by another who had also found it desirable; it was a challenge to return it to the public eye, where all could admire her hollow expression and ghostly blue eyes.

But what if he said he was tired of it all—what if he sat back and let the water trickle through his fingers but not even bend to take a drink?

He was Artemis Fowl.

If he wanted to thirst another day, he could.

_But he didn't want to_.

And so he traveled on towards Dublin, on towards where there was sweet water pouring from silver pitchers into goblets of gold, set with jewels, shining with fire as he drank in his danger and smiled.

**:i:**

Juliet pulled into a public parking lot; when she got out of the car, she was met with Artemis' Look for the third time that day. "I'm going with you," she stated resolutely.

Artemis shook his head, slipping his watch on; she could only imagine what fun lay in that.

"Holly's going," Juliet persisted. "Why can't I?"

Artemis began to walk away; a haze at his side bobbed up and down to keep up to his long strides. "Holly has camfoil. Go—shopping, or something."

Juliet stared after them with a definite pout. Everyone knew Dublin had awful boutiques.

Artemis was making his way towards an apartment complex on the upside of Dublin. His associate had no particular name; upon their first… arrangement, he was told to call him Monsieur.

Now, Monsieur had a French accent, as his name predicted, but besides that Artemis knew little. He was the Mafia's kingpin in Ireland, and he had a fondness for post-Modernist aesthetics. He had a deep voice—probably a big man—and he was quite paranoid, keeping not just his face but his entire body wreathed in shadows. He had two known servants in his immediate household, both chocolate-eyed Indian maids with brilliant crimson sakis. His apartment suite occupied the top few floors of the complex; beyond that, Artemis knew only what hijacked satellites could provide about Monseiur's home. The blueprints had been tactfully wiped from the public view, as Fowl Manor had been.

Monsieur had never given Artemis any reason to suspect conspiracy; for a bad guy, he was pretty good. He had paid Artemis no attention until the six-year-old informed him of the state of Monsieur Monseiur's bank account. Monsieur agreed cooperation, in exchange for his silence on the matter of his account being stolen by a beardless boy. Since then, they had proved invaluable to each other on several occasions: Artemis had been almost regretful to sever contacts with Monsieur, along with the criminal world at large.

He entered the lobby; the first time he had come there, he had thought the decorator had aesthetic issues. Now, having read the _I Ching_, he knew the feng shui devotee didn't have aesthetic but mental issues. Crystals and colors, as according to whatever book she had been self-taught from, managed to make a energy-balanced room look quite unbalanced to his eyes.

The haze at his side tapped her foot impatiently; he knew this only because it landed on the toe of his Armani loafer.

After a time, the elevator opened; a Swede woman exited, wearing Nina Ricci's idea of a jumpsuit: skintight, white, covering all skin but for her hands and face. It managed to look more (Artemis _hated_ using this word) erotic than a bikini ever could. Her form was especially slim, and her tan managed to compliment the snowy regalia, along with moderate make-up that seemed entirely inconspicuous. She beckoned towards him; he followed. He was elbowed sharply in the mid-thigh.

The door closed; the elevator moved upwards on its own accord. The haze shuffled behind him, brushing against the back of his legs.

The woman turned towards him, _facing _him completely. He was four inches taller, nd deeply regretted the view.

She moved closer. He was against the wall; he couldn't move back. Besides, there were only her eyes, gray-blue like thawing paternoster lakes, dusted with mascara that made them look all the deeper, like fjords in the winter; her cheekbones were sharp and high, giving her an angular, almost elfin appearance; and _below_, below that whip of a nose, her lips, plush, parted, pale pink like the blush in Butler's roses—

They moved, startling him from his disturbing reverie. "Weapons check, Master Fowl."

He nodded, looking up at the ceiling. A miniature of the Sistine Chapel sustained his mind while she bent down and patted down his legs. When she started on his thighs, Michelangelo was no longer sufficient: he turned to Marcus Aurelius, _Meditation_s, and the philosophy of stoicism.

He happened to glance down when she started on his torso; the view made him look up again, distracted only momentarily by the ceiling. His ears began to burn; he doused them with _Tragic Sense of Life_, Unamuno, the philosopher obsessed with Don Quixote in a most quixotic fashion.

They raged again as she ran her hands across his chest. He thought of Nietzsche, _So Spoke Zarathustra_: but why, _why_ in Virgil's name could he not remember a line of it, though he had read it scarce a week ago?

Her hands moved up the nape of his neck, cool against his flushed skin; and began to run through his hair. It was a few inches long, combed back, and he could scarce resist as she mussed it up. Her fingers were firm and long. Surely she felt the heat of his skin—D'Arvit, was she _enjoying_ this?

The elevator beeped; and the ordeal was over. She stepped out first and walked towards the end of the corridor presented.

Artemis blinked. Was she swaying her _hips_?

He stepped out; the woman stopped at a door, gesturing for him to follow. "_Arrêtes-toi!_" he muttered in French; the haze shuddered at his side as she tried to withhold her laughter.

**:i:**

Sorry about the weird hiatus! First I died for a few weeks, and then the power died. I had meant to post this Saturday, but… Sorry! I have lots of ficlets to makey up for it. Mostly drabbles, which I've been experimenting in lately. Check them out!

I'll have chapter two, dealing with Artemis' encounter with Monsieur, on Saturday. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

Oh: was the thing with Artemis in the elevator over-the-top? I couldn't resist, you see, but it's easy to take out in later revisions. I was wondering how he might, er, react in a situation like that.

As always, constructive criticism is the best thing you can do for me. I always go back and revise stuff, so don't think you'll just be spewing stuff or anything… I'm really bad at editing my own things, so I need you guys. If you don't have any CC, at least tell me what I'm doing _right _here. S'il te plaît? (I have fallen in love with French, in case you haven't noticed.)


	4. Chapter 4

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Four

**:i:**

Monsieur's tastes had, indeed, changed; his apartment suite was now a marvel of crystal and mirrors, not at all the dark, crimson place of all those years ago. He had the vague feeling of being in America, trying too hard to be modern; it made him uncomfortable.

Monsieur occupied a smudge of darkness by the couch; in the light-filled room, it must have been a difficult feat to manage. He found it difficult to analyze the rest of the room's changes; his eyes were drawn to the shadow like a high-power magnet. He let them be: he had never had any particular fondness for interior design.

Monsieur gestured towards a throne of glass; the shadow followed his arm out. Programming for this effect, at first, was simple; but the more Artemis thought about how every mirrored surface, every opaque obstruction, every light source, every change in position had to be taken into account, the more his admiration grew. He should inquire into its acquisition.

But that was not what he was here for; Artemis slipped into the throne opposite Monsieur, who occupied a similar one of mirrors. Not one face reflected Monsieur's specifics; simply an outline to be colored in by Artemis' imagination.

Of course, his imagination had the most brilliant mind in Europe to use for this purpose. Monsieur's accent came from the more eastern domain, tinged by German—he pictured the bastard child of a Nazi officer and a French showgirl, struggling to survive in the German occupation, accepting her patron's advances until the end of the war, the child. Monsieur's shame for his looks could be explained with persecution as a child for his Aryan looks and suspect father. Not finding sympathy with the government and the better side of the law, he had sought and found more open minds with those who had flourished under Mussolini. Rising through the ranks with his ruthless methods, compliments of a cruel childhood, he had soon been named head of the Irish section to overthrow the Fowl dynasty, and bring Mafia to the Emerald Isle.

It was as best a theory he could come up with it; but he wouldn't bet a single euro on his presumptions. Monsieur remained an enigma, and Artemis didn't mind.

"And what," Monsieur asked in his simmering alto, "brings you to the Hall of Mirrors?" He made a grand gesture; the shadows followed his arms, not even revealing the color of suit he wore.

"Business," Artemis replied. "Alas, I could not resist for long."

Monsieur's tone implied he had raised a brow. "You swore off crime; Junior keeps his promises, no?"

It was a fair assumption on Monsieur's part, but Artemis was a little surprised at this leap of logic. Monsieur was one of the few men that neared his IQ for criminality, though not near his match in other aspects. He had forgotten this.

Artemis had truly enjoyed their time together. The more he thought about their parting of ways, the more he wished it had not been so; though he and Monsieur competed, certainly, as the Mafia had wanted them to, Monsieur had always told him in advance when the Mafia had required an assassination attempt on him, giving him ample time to prepare.

Besides, Artemis owed him his life: Britva had told higher-ups in Italy about Fowl.

Monsieur had kept them from all-out war.

It was for this reason that Artemis let Monsieur call him 'Junior'.

Artemis leaned forward and stared intently into where he thought Monsieur's eyes were. "You didn't warn me."

"I didn't know." Monsieur was intrigued; he could tell by the voice, the shift of the shoulders. Monsieur made another gesture; the woman from the elevator came over with, of all things, Cuban cigars. Artemis declined; Monsieur gave him a look and took one. The shadows enveloped the cigar; gray smoke spiraled upwards into a discreet vent. "You had better tell me, then."

"The plan was perfect, the assassin was not."

"And you think someone had a plan, but didn't want to get their nails broken?"

Artemis nodded; "The attack was five hours ago, if it helps."

"Five and a half."

Artemis laced his fingers and sighed. "Alas," he murmured.

"Offer me money."

"One ton, unmarked ingots."

"Too cumbersome. Offer me power."

"Fowl Corporation."

"I hate legitimacy. Butler, the pretty one."

"With pleasure."

Monsieur leaned forward. The woman at his side drew a gun from her jumpsuit; vaguely, he wondered how it could fit. "Offer me _Girl in Solitude._"

Artemis smiled; the haze at his side trembled with a memory. "Never. How much did he offer you, by the way?"

"Not enough," Monsieur replied. He made a gesture; the woman slipped into the black hole, the shadows swallowing her up. The gun, presumably, was pointed in a more comfortable direction.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I suppose you want her name now, too?" Monsieur asked. He made another flippant gesture; Artemis followed those expressive hands, entranced. "Junior, you want too much. Be happy: you have your vow." He made a stabbing movement with his cigar. "I'm not a man for vows, but I know you won't be very happy if you break yours."

Artemis raised a brow with all the delicacy of handling fine china. "I have no intention of breaking my vow," he replied coolly. "Tell me who _she_ is, and I will be sure to get the _original_ back into _her_ hands."

Monsieur gave a sigh; the shadow heaved. "Ah, for a mind like yours."

"Tell me."

"Offer me money."

"We've been through this."

Monsieur cocked his head. "For old times sake, Junior"

"I won't be coming back again, you know."

Another gesture; his arm the black of night. "For me."

"One million euros."

"Tree-killer. Offer me power."

"I rigged the last election."

"Too honest. Offer me—your undying love and gratitude."

"Given," Artemis replied, "with a full heart."

"I'd miss your birthdays." He twirled his cigar. "She calls herself Medea Atreus. Wore a burqa; no features could be made out—" he continued as Artemis began to interrupt "—even with that lovely video enhancement program you gave me, all those years ago." His end was sardonic, bitter, by the flourish of his hands and the edge to his voice.

Artemis got up to leave. "My undying gratitude." He walked to the door; the woman slipped from the darkness and stood before the door.

Artemis raised a brow; Monsieur shrugged. "Stella, dear, what is it?"

"We left something unfinished," she murmured.

Eyes like the mirrors around him met his; _she's rather tall_, he thought, _rather convenient—_

Artemis Fowl has been surprised three times in his life. It is mere coincidence that all three have been in the presence of Holly, presumably planned by fate so she could use these occasions for the vilest sorts of blackmail.

Monsieur was amused; the shadows around him rippled, implicating a long, silent roll of laughter across his bulk. Whether his eyes were closed, or whether he was completely aware to the following events, Artemis would never learn.

'Stella' was not a very good multitasker. She didn't get to practice it often; Monsieur felt that ornaments are best kept unstained by stress. This is quite fortunate, since though Stella was a damn good seductress, just like she was a damn good assassin, she could simply not carry out the two at the same time. It took her exactly two second longer to slip the gun from her jumpsuit; the haze saw the flash of black and found it to be suspicious.

Artemis' watch was a present from Foaly; it was a prototype design for him to test. Since then, it had become standard in LEP spy missions belowground. Holly didn't participate much in these, but she stayed on top of Foaly's delightful inventions.

Artemis kept his hands limp by his sides, not being quite sure what to do with them. Holly reached forward and tapped the screen twice.

All rained silver and diamonds; the sonic blast had shattered every mirror and glass surface, virtually the entire apartment. Artemis was tugged into the hallway; alarm bells were ringing, but the elevator still worked. They made a dash for it. The door closed behind them; the world was suddenly very, very quiet.

"You didn't have to do that," Artemis said.

Holly cuffed his shoulder, now visible, and sent the elevator on its way down. The buttons were at a very convenient height for her, after all. "She was trying to kill you, Mud Boy."

"I would have died happy."

Holly laughed; then stopped. "Wait, was that a _joke_?"

He nodded mutely. "An… attempted joke."

She laughed harder. The door opened before them; as he walked out of the suite, there appeared to be a slight haze besides him.

Juliet was outside, loaded with bags. "I thought you'd be here," she said, pointing to the shattered windows above. "Know anything about our assassin?"

The wail of sirens rose above the city. Artemis began a slow, nonchalant walk back to the parking garage. "She's an idealistic rich Canadian with a fixation on angst."

Juliet's bags bobbed up and down. An ambulance pulled in on the curb behind them. "Wait, _she_?"

Artemis waved his hand dismissively. "The employer is more dangerous than the employee," he replied. "Pass me your cell phone, won't you? I'm afraid mine's shattered."

Juliet complied, confused but quite used to that state of being.

Artemis punched in several buttons; thirty feet down the street, he slipped the bubblegum pink cellphone into a _Victoria's Secret_ bag.

"What'd you do?" Juliet demanded.

"Our employee has a Yahoo account," Artemis replied.

"Oh," Juliet said; then did a double-take as they entered the garage. "Wait, is that a _hickey_?"

Artemis touched his bleeding lip. "Oh," he said. "That." He seemed lost in thought.

"Oh, so you've moved on from blackmail to seduction."

More sirens. "Hardly. She was trying to kill me."

"Oooh, black widow."

He turned to Juliet as they reached the car. "She chose an… unusual method to distract me. Holly activated the sonic bomb in my watch; the woman was in a lot of pain."

"Right." Juliet tossed her bags into the back.

Artemis opened her door. "Please, don't tell Father.'

Juliet slid into the driver's seat. "Okay," she said, "I won't."

Artemis touched his bleeding lip again. _Really_.

**:i:**

Short chapter, but that was the best place to stop.

Was any of that confusing? There's going to be explanations next chapter when things settle out a bit at Fowl Manor, so if anything's confusing, I'll hopefully cover it then. If not, give me a shout and I'll do something. A lot of things are Artemis!reasoning, which would have otherwise disrupted the flow of the story, and I'm trying to keep this going at a good pace. Next chapter is my time for those, since there's no action, just messing around on computers and the like.

CC, please! I have no beta for this, and I feel like I'm overburdening poor Lily with _Descent_ and all my oneshots. CC's all I got. And, in case you haven't noticed, I can't catch typos at all. Thanks!


	5. Chapter 5

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Five

**:i:**

The genius of Artemis Fowl had not been discovered until he was near three years old: he had forgotten to lock the door to the piano room. Before, everyone had assumed it was recordings, the Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

Once he had discovered the internet, he had near abandoned the piano, but it, of all the disciplines he had mastered, was the closest to his heart, his first.

Thus, it was the piano he found solace in now.

Halfway through a Moonlight Sonata variation, he spoke through the slow magic of the chords: "Mother sits on the bed. Father, on the chair. Dom stands; Juliet by him. You need not listen through the door."

The door opened: Holly returned to the visible spectrum and scowled. "How did you know?"

Artemis twirled some grace notes. "Trade secret, alas. Now, is this as good as that synthesized shit in Haven?"

"How vulgar," Holly replied; Artemis seldom swore, though here, it was in mockery, not out of any real disgust. She leaned against the wall and smiled. "And yes, it _is_ far better than that 'synthesized shit'."

"I thought so."

The notes sank down into pool and paused, the moonlight still on the waters, resting there as if in some great dream of tranquility. "What are you thinking about?"

He sighed, and the music rose; the pond rippled. "I am pondering my own stupidity."

"I could always heal the hickey, you know."

The music laughed with a whimsical turn of tempo. "It's a lovely bit of memorabilia, actually."

"First kiss?"

"Not quite."

"_Bisoux_ don't count."

"'First Blonde', if you must know."

"No Juliet?"

The music forgot itself; Artemis turned around. "Employees are off-limit."

"And assassins aren't?"

Artemis touched the… afflicted places. "Certainly not," he replied, and stood. "Have you any experience with 'netspeak'?"

Holly grinned and followed him out the door. "Some. As an intern, I was given the task of tracking down homophiles over the net. I sifted through the IM records."

"Pornography is illegal in Haven?"

"_Mud Man_ pornography," Holly corrected. "The Council ruled that loving Mud Man 'spirits' was equitable with porn."

Artemis' brow was raised. He was well-acquainted with porn: his Galatea virus had nearly rendered it extinct over the net. After some degraded programmer isolated and contained his creation, he had never bothered to pursue the matter. It was a distasteful venture to begin with; and Butler had always given him the strangest looks while he was working. "In any case: Canadian slang?"

She made a face. "The Gift of Tongues is rather iffy on slang. It translates, but… odd things happen. And it's damn near impossible to speak."

"What about dialects?"

"Kind of," she said, following him into down the stairs. "Again, some things translate a little funny, but I can get the gist of it."

He nodded, and opened the door to the study. "I might need your assistance; my… education regarding such matters have been mercifully lax. Now: what do you think of our insistent mosquito?"

She selected a swivel chair and plopped down. "Probably some rich git that decided, strangely enough, he didn't like you."

"She," Artemis corrected idly. "Is that all?"

She spun the chair around. "Well, being an absolute idiot goes unsaid. Can't plan, can't hire, can't do squat. You haven't been very careful lately; if it had been Britva or anyone else you've managed to piss off, you'd be dead."

He took a seat, and considered the computer before him. Angeline had had this one specially made with mahogany keys and the like as an anniversary present to 'Timmy': it clashed less with her preferred Victorian aesthetics. "Monsieur gave her name as 'Medea Atreus'. It's obviously a pseudonym, and probably symbolic; by analyzing this, we can analyze her."

Holly pondered the name. "Sounds like Latin."

"Greek," Artemis corrected. "'Medea' was the sorceress-witch that aided Jason and the Argonauts when they sought the Golden Fleece. 'Atreus' is a royal house noted for its high familicide rates, and also for its occurrence in a certain science fiction series."

Holly nodded. She moved in on the computer and started a game of 'Space Cadet' pinball. "Hey, _Dune_, right? I had to read that in Mud Man Literature 220."

"Hardly a fair representation, but yes. However, I doubt she chose the pseudonym for that reason. Now, the first aspect: the goddess Hera favored Jason, and, wishing to aid him on his quest, had Medea, guardian of the Golden Fleece, witch extraordinaire and the local princess, shot by one of Eros', or Cupid's, arrows. For Jason's sake, Medea cast numerous charms, killed her brother, betrayed her father, left the country of her birth, bore him two sons, killed Jason's uncle, _et cetera_, and he repaid her by marrying another woman and kicking her out of his house. She, quite understandably, went a little bonkers at the end."

"What happened?"

He smiled. "Killed her children, burned Jason's fiancé alive, and rode off in a flying chariot."

Holly shook her head. "You Mud Men have an odd sense of drama."'

He shrugged. "Typical Euripides. Now, the house of Atreus features Cassandra, who had the gift of foresight—but no one ever believed her prophecies of doom, especially for her father's house."

"Why?" Holly interrupted.

"Apollo promised her the Sight if she would sleep with him; after receiving the Sight, she refused, and he then cursed her. Now, to her father Agamemnon: He sacrificed another daughter of his so the Trojan War would begin favorably, and then left home for ten-some years during the aforesaid war. When he returned with a sex slave, his wife Clytemnestra went into a rage and had her lover kill him. In revenge, his daughter Electra killed her and then, in turn, herself."

Holly wrinkled her nose. "_Really_. And people _like _this stuff?"

"Nothing compared to _Oedipus Rex_, I assure you." Artemis considered Holly's high score on pinball and frowned; she had beaten his. Easily. Not that he had ever taken pinball seriously, of course. "Clearly, 'Medea Atreus' has a taste for unrequited angst. I doubt any of the symbolisms apply directly to her life—lost a lover, killed a father? She probably just has some interesting fantasies."

Holly watched Artemis' pinball game with interest. 'Space Cadet' was an LEP favorite. "That's why people watch soap operas. Works out all that mushy nonsense. And don't look at me like that."

"So _defensive_, dear Holly." He finished the game with a flourish. "_Touché_."

Holly scowled at the new high score, and began a new round. "Anything else?"

"The burqa girl; you've seen the Louvre tape, no?"

She nodded through her frantic pinball game. "Entered alone, left alone. Stopped only at _Girl in Solitude_, and then, only to bump into you. Face was never exposed; fingerprints impossible."

"Such a poor summation," Artemis murmured, watching Holly's playing appreciatively. "You missed out on all the delicious details. For example: the burqa was homemade."

"She's poor?"

"No: she wanted to be discreet. A Caucasian American buying a burqa, and an unusual shade of orange, would be traceable, _especially_ over the web." He paused Holly's game, raising a brief protest, and, bringing up a clip from the Louvre, zoomed in on the burqa. "See these seams? Handsewn. I suspect she got the pattern at a local sewing store, which would also explain the peculiar color. All untraceable, too

"Rather paranoid, isn't she?"

"Or just economical, though that's unlikely, considering she probably wasn't in the actual thievery…" He paused, considering the game. "But the assassin, he had such elegant entry and exit plans… planned by her? He was such an amateur, he could not even carry them out… Perhaps she is Dutch?"

Holly frowned. "Dutch? I thought you said—"

He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "'Dutch', 'penny pincher', _et cetera. _The point is, she is either on a tight budget or sacrifices quality for price."

She nodded along, taking the computer back from Artemis and resuming the pinball. "Anything else?"

He paused, considering. "The painting. I pulled it from an aristocrat's summer home in Alberta. All my research beforehand on the family—maids, friends, relatives, anyone—showed no one like this girl. The couple were both retired Bollywood stars of, obviously, Indian descent, with no children and a stable marriage—no affairs, no possible 'Medea'. They hired the son of a local rancher to take care of the house when they weren't around, who had to drive nearly thirty kilometers just to get there: the place is very isolated, so no neighbors can explain the girl either. They never entertained there, either; social _things_ occurred at their Bombay penthouse suite. Furthermore, there is no record of this Fragonard that one can find by accident; if I hadn't, ah, _relocated_ a painting by his granddaughter Morisot, I never would have even known of its existence."

Holly frowned at her score, and started a new game. "So we don't know the girl's connection to the painting."

"We don't _know_ anything," Artemis corrected. "These are all suppositions; they are guides, not certainties. We _think_ she's very emotional, but maybe she just liked the sound of 'Medea Atreus'; we _think_ she's Canadian, but I had only one phrase to identify a very faint accent, and the location of the original painting."

"Ah," Holly said succinctly, now quite absorbed in pinball. "Well, how do you propose we track her down?"

"Assume I'm right." He took the mouse from Holly.

"Bu—"

"It's a start," he replied, opening a Firefox browser. "There are other extrapolations to make as well: for example, is Medea the actual mastermind? Or just a puppet? I prefer to handle these sort of matters in person, but others send in associates instead. She does seem rather young to be the criminal mastermind we are looking for; and young women are more effective at persuading for certain types. Monsieur, for example. She could be just a liaison while the real mind is safe behind his piña colada in Barbados."

Holly chuckled; Artemis was creating a false Yahoo! ID. "'Achilles'? Is that how you imagine yourself?"

Artemis shrugged, typing in a faux Seattle address. "Almost. I just don't sleep with dead women."

Holly pressed on doggedly. "I never knew you imagined yourself a hero. Or is it more symbolic: what is your _Achilles_ heel, Arty?"

Artemis turned, like a ballerina doing slow pirouettes, and stared. "People calling me 'Arty'."

Holly looked shocked at herself. "Wait, I didn't say—"

Artemis turned back to the computer, fingers flying across the keyboard as they birthed Achilles. "Yes, you did. I'd rather you not."

"Juliet calls you 'Arty'."

"I tell her not to. Every day."

"_Pauvre vieux,_"Holly said mockingly. "Do you want to know my nickname? 'Crazy girlie captain'. In the headlines, for every case. '_Crazy girlie captain does it again'_, '_Crazy girlie captain cracks the case'_. Almost no one in Haven knows me by 'Holly Short'—I'll walk down the street, and that's what they'll call me: 'Hey, aren't you the crazy girlie captain?'"

"_Pauvre vieille_," Artemis replied in turn. He swiveled away from the screen. "I have the 'instant messenger' downloaded. Hopefully, I can make contact—there is a 'medeaatreus' registered at Yahoo, though she has no activity in the 'launchcast', 'group' or any other service. The mere fact that she _has_ a username makes me believe she is a late teen or young tween who got it purely for use of the instant messaging service."

Holly squinted. "Well, can't you hack into her account or something? Figure out what she's been up to and stuff?"

Artemis scowled. "Even if she's a _teen_, she somehow managed to get mixed up in all this. She'll know if I start sifting through her home computer, whether it's because Papa Mobster is looking over her shoulder or because she's an idiot savant when it comes to being a nuisance. Really, this way is safest; she'll have no idea who I am."

"Why would she respond to a random IM by someone she doesn't even know?" Holly demanded. "For all she knows, you're a… a pedophile or something." She gestured wildly, swaying in the swivel chair.

Artemis opened a messaging window. "She'll respond," he replied evenly. "It's human nature."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Fairy children," she said, "never speak to strangers."

"Clearly, you were never a child." He typed in a 'you there?' "Children always, _always_, speak to strangers. It's whether they run away or not."

"Will Medea run away?"

Artemis stared; the screen was blank except for his query, small and black and neat "No," he said at last. "She wants to meet someone, someone like her; she was so sloppy, so…"

Holly pointed at the screen. "Ding-dong."

Artemis was obliged to look.

**medeaatreus**: hello?

**:i:**

Sorry about the long absence; I've been all over the place lately. Check out my livejournal for details regarding the next update and my personal thoughts regarding this chapter.

Anywho, I hope the dialogue didn't drag too much. I tried to make it interesting, and also that Artemis' psychoanalyzation of 'Medea Atreus' made it worthwhile. As he said, nothing was certain about his predictions; so don't make too many assumptions about her yet. He is by no means correct, by his own admittance.

Anyone catch the 'dead woman' reference? Hint, it's the motif in another of my fics…

BTW: who else is addicted to 'Space Cadet'? The pinball game that comes with Windows? (Yes, Artemis has Windows. I know nothing about Macs, and I like to stay on comfortable ground. So so_rry_ if I like to know what I'm talking about.)


	6. Chapter 6

**I N F E R N O**

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Six

**:i:**

Artemis considered the screen.

"Well, write something!" Holly exclaimed.

Artemis ignored her, staring steadily ahead, considering, pondering, brooding, wondering—

Holly pushed Artemis' chair aside; being of the swivel variety, it skidded and fell over. Artemis, being of the clumsy variety, fell along with it.

Artemis was not amused. Falling from a chair was hardly a carnival ride. "Hol—_Holly!_"

Holly had hijacked the keyboard, and was merrily typing away. "Yes?"

"Off the computer!" he rasped, disentangling himself from the chair while trying to hold up a shelf he had knocked off balance at the same time. "This is a delicate matter!"

Holly briefly considered Artemis' situation: then turned back to the computer. "Oh look, she just insulted Achilles' parental heritage. Was he really a bastard, because I didn't think your father—"

"He didn't," Artemis said hotly, struggling to hold up the shelf, which was threatening his cranium. "Now, can you get Juliet—"

"I'll ask her if she's seen _Troy_," Holly responded cheerfully, fingers pattering away. "Foaly made me watch it, and I have to say, whoever played Achilles was a real—"

After sliding out of the way, he let the shelf fall down; Juliet could take care of it for him. She needed something to do besides come up with new nicknames, in any case. "Holly, don't, this is a delicate matter—"

"Oops," Holly replied.

Artemis leapt to his feet and darted towards the screen; Holly had written nothing at all. He couldn't hold back a sigh of relief. "Holly, really, that wasn't funny in the slightest—"

"Foaly says that he begs to differ," she replied, and tapped her comm piece with a grin. "He says the expression on your face is going to be his new screensaver."

Artemis scowled, recovering his chair from the wreckage. "Tell _Foaly_ that unless he knows the perfect icebreaker, he can return to his soap operas."

Holly listened to the comm piece for a few moments. "He says to remark on the symbolism of her name; it works every time."

"Is that true?"

She grinned. "You'd be surprised."

Artemis secured himself in front of the computer: **achilles42**: what do you think of apsyrtus?

"Apsyrtus?"

"Medea's brother," Artemis said curtly, then added, "In mythology, of course. I have no idea about her real life—"

**medeaatreus:** who remembers briseis?

**achilles42**: rhadamanthys

"Artemis, I can't help if you don't explain any of this—"

"Briseis was one of Achilles' more memorable lovers; for her sake, Achilles nearly ended the Trojan War. Rhadamanthys judges all dead from the East, where both Achilles and Medea supposedly died."

"I still don't get it."

"Oh well."

**medeaatreus**: morae, why now?

**achilles42: **ulysses found me

"Artemis…"

Artemis shot her an annoyed look, then explained. "The Morae are the spinners of the tapestry of life; think of them as the goddesses of fate: she's surprised that she found someone so conveniently, and is asking if there's any particular reason why this is happening. Ulysses was the one who found Achilles and brought him into the Trojan war; I am saying that I was introduced to her through a third party through temptation."

"But then won't she ask who—"

"I'm hoping she won't," Artemis replied. "I don't know nearly enough about her yet—_"_

"What, what?" Holly demanded; Artemis cutting off his own explanation was a strange thing to here,

Artemis pointed at the screen: **medeaatreus**: who tore you from telemachus?

He put his head in his hands; but then jerked away from himself, agitated. Finally, he typed: **achilles42:** thetis; i desired the styx

Holly opened her mouth: Artemis intervened. "I'm saying that I was promised immortality by one I trusted, but it wasn't what I expected, and I am now cursed."

"But—"

"She'll like that kind of thing," Artemis replied.

Holly fidgeted in her chair. "When will you two start speaking English again?"

"This _is_ Engl—"

"No," Holly shot back, "it's trollish as far as I'm considered. When will you two have a _normal_ conversation?"

**medeaatreus:**

"She probably finds this amusing; I doubt she'll stop anytime soon."

"Well," Holly snapped, "she probably thinks this is a competition, and if she's as pigheaded as you this will never end."

"If it's a competition, I have no intention of losing."

Holly stuck her tongue out at Artemis; he smiled and returned his attention to the IM. **achilles42**: do you desire the parsley?

"Parsley?"

"Some variants on the original Olympic Games began as funeral games to honor dead royalty, using parsley crowns instead of laurels to show their respect for the dead. I'm implicating the death of a family member on my end."

"Mom or dad?"

Artemis scowled. "Neither, thank you."

**medeaatreus**: what of nepenthe?

Holly pointed at the screen excitedly. "Hey, I know that one! Nepenthe is something that makes you forget, right?"

Artemis turned and stared. "And where did you learn that one?"

Holly grinned. "Mud Man Mythology at the LEP Academy. It was the only pronounceable thing in the class, what with Minamoseena and all."

"You mean Mnemosyne?"

Holly scowled. "Isn't your girlfriend is expecting a response?"

Artemis opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. Stella lurked on his mind in a most uncomfortable manner. **achilles42**: lethe is just as sweet "Remember anything else from the mythology class?"

Holly pursed her lips, then turned, and inspected the books scattered on the floor behind her. After a few moments she selected one and turned, triumphant.

**medeaatreus**: does hypnos call?

**achilles42**: melpomene does

"Melpomene?"

"The Muse of tragic poetry. Definitely a patron of sorts to her; I'm making it seem as if I have the urge to write something, and I'm thinking about getting off soon."

"But don't you want to stay on as long as possible? You know, get all friendly and stuff?"

Artemis shook his head. "She'll want to talk to me more. I've intrigued her; she's interested. I seem like a reflection of herself in a mirror; she wants to reach out and see if I'm more than just that."

**medeaatreus**: OK

Holly smirked. "You know what they say about stupid mistakes—"

Artemis scowled. "I don't make stupid mistakes," he said hotly. "Only very, very clever ones."

Holly demonstrated grandly towards the keyboard. "Demonstrate the cleverness of your mistake, O Almighty Lord of the Keyboa—"

Artemis pushed Holly's swivel chair to the side; she spun out and fell amidst the scattered books. Amidst her scattered swearing, he found solace and typed peacefully. **achilles42**: when does fair eos rise?

**medeaatreus:** when does helios return from the chariot?

Artemis grinned slightly. "I told you so."

"That doesn't mean much when I have _no_ idea what just happened."

"I asked her when she would be on again; she said that she'd be on whenever it is convenient for me." **achilles42**: when the chariot sets in circe's sky

**medeaatreus**: until then

**achilles42**: vale

He logged off.

Holly scrambled up and pounced on Artemis; the swivel chair spun out and he fell again, tangling this time in the full-length drapes. As he succeeded in bringing the entire drape complex down upon him and the swivel chair, she succeeded in conquering the computer.

"Why in Frond's name did you _quit_! You guys were just getting friendly—"

Artemis' head popped from the crimson drapes; it looked rather like a crumpled ladybug, black hair sticking up from a flounce of red cloth. "We _are_ 'friendly'."

Holly brought up pinball again. "Seemed kinda nosy to be 'friendly'. 'Who sent you?' 'Why are you talking to me?' _Real_ friendly, Artemis."

Artemis stood; the drapes wrapped about him like the robe of a king. "Genii do not treat relationships the same way as you might."

"You don't treat _me_ like that."

He shook the drapes off, and considered the mess around him. The study looked as if his two-year-old self had come in. "You're different. You're—"

"Not a genius," Holly replied. There was no jealousy, no envy; only simple fact, clear and concise.

Somewhat pointlessly, he began stacking the scattered books on the floor, sorting by author. "Precisely. By virtue of our very intelligence, we approach relationships in a very different manner: though we crave friendship and intimacy, we are instinctually suspicious of any people who might provide such fulfillment, often rationalizing why they may prove to be inadequate or fallacious."

Holly turned from the new pinball game. "_That_ sounded rehearsed."

Artemis looked up from the floor; his stack of Ts (Tolkien, Twain, Tolstoy) stood like the Tower of Babel. "I wrote an essay on the matter for my first grade teacher. She couldn't comprehend my hatred of 'recess'."

"Because you were 'rationalizing why they might prove inadequate'?"

"No," Artemis replied hotly, "they _were _inadequate, I was just being thorough with the essay—"

Holly waved this aside. "You're missing the point."

Artemis frowned, then relaxed. "Ah: you're referring to our relationship."

Holly nodded.

"Well," Artemis replied, "it's not exactly normal, is it? It doesn't fit with the generalizations; but then, that's all they are. Generalizations."

"So you don't go around making up reasons why we can't be friends."

"No," Artemis said—and then with a grin, "Though God knows it would be easy."

"I could say the same."

Artemis turned and raised a brow. "I have eight, right off the top of my head."

"Twenty-one."

"List them."

Holly sniffed. "I'd rather not. You'd never forgive me."

"I have no such qualms," Artemis replied. "For example: fewer red-heads in the gene pool."

Holly looked for something to throw: unfortunately, the nearest object, a gilt lamp, was nearly as large as her. She settled with a cherubic pout. "And why would that concern you, Monsieur Chastity?"

He tapped the side of his head. "_Tape-à-l'oeil_."

Holly opened her mouth, like a rose bud. "Red hair is not gaudy!" She sifted through her mind for a comeback. "Black hair—black hair looks like tar!"

Artemis grinned, and sifted through his Ds: Defoe, Dawkins, Dostoevsky. "Really? I liken it to 'a wing of night', or 'shadow-woven'."

Holly grimaced, and turned to her pinball game. The sounds were oddly out of place in the Victorian excess of the room. "You read flowery stuff like that?"

"Medea Atreus does."

"Oh, _now_ we get back on topic."

Artemis nodded, now adding to the Ss: Steinbeck, Stevenson, Socrates. "She is a rather important matter, yes?"

Holly spun on the chair. "Fine. What is her new profile, Dr Lecter?"

Artemis considered _The Brothers Karamazov_. "Young; maybe even a teenager. She's not particularly wary; curious, accepting, trusting. Probably quite naïve. She probably leads a sheltered, somewhat spoiled life with benevolent parents; when she wants to travel, she travels, which would explain why a young adult would be able to travel so much. If she's not a genius, then she's at least well-read and studious. She has a practical mind; she's the sort who has little difficulty at school, but has better things to do in her own mind. She—"

"Artemis?" Holly said abruptly.

Artemis turned to face her. "Yes?"

"She sounds like you."

He blinked; _Karamazov_ slipped through his hands, its fall well-padded by the lush carpeting. "I was never a sheltered child. She has; she fantasizes that she has had this dramatic angsty past. She idealizes things that are not beautiful things; hate, death, jealousy—"

"—greed, pride, power," Holly finished, crossing her arms.

Artemis stared at _Karamazov_, then shook his head. "I was influenced by a father who idealized such things."

"Maybe she's influenced by a member of a gothic heavy metal rock band who idealizes anger and violence," she continued smoothly. "The point is,

Artemis gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. She's a teenage simulacrum of me, if that's what. Just bear in mind that I didn't fantasize; I made it real. If I wanted something, _I_ _took it_."

"She stole the painting."

"She calls herself 'Medea Atreus'."

"You called yourself 'Artemis the Hunter'."

"She—" Artemis slapped _Karamazov_ on top of the Ds; he was silent for a moment, then fast, fevered. "She's not like me. I never fancied myself some dark tragic hero; I always knew _exactly what I was_."

"Then you have a rare gift," Holly replied softly. She sat cross-legged, pensive. "What is it about her that bothers you so much?"

Artemis began forming the Ps: Pasternak, Pratchett, Poe. "I—I don't know. She's—" He made a scattered gesture, as if trying to pull stray thoughts from the air like clouds from the sky.

"You don't understand her."

Artemis glared, and opened his mouth to reply. "No, she's—"

"It's not through lack of trying," Holly said, and grinned through her Mahatma mask. "You don't have enough information to decipher her; so she remains the enigma. However, this enigma does not threaten your friends or family; only your pride."

Artemis seemed to fall in on himself with a graceful little sigh. "Yes, I suppose that's it." He considered _Karamazov_, at a tilt with the rest of the Ds; after straightening it, he lifted himself up, unfolding like black origami. "You play quite the psychologist, Holly; far superior to Po."

Holly gave a small, theatrical bow. "Actors are always better than the real thing."

Artemis paused at the door. "I'll fetch Juliet for the mess. You might want to stay out her way; she hates cleaning up after me."

"She'll be wondering what we were doing."

Artemis grinned. "I'll leave it to her imagination."

With that, he left; Holly was left at the computer with not pinball but Medea Atreus on her mind.

**:i:**

Heya! An update, finally. Hope you all enjoyed that.

I was trying a lighter style in this chapter; tell me how it worked. Also, I tried to show how comfortable Artemis was with Holly; how he relaxes somewhat around her, not nearly as stiff as he is in the books. Tell me how it worked. Also, if you were confused by the mythological references in the conversation with Medea Atreus, sorry. I didn't want big long explanations to everything to drag down the text; however, if there's a general consensus that there wasn't enough explanation, I'll add more in for future readers.

There'll be a section on this on my lj; feel free to respond there as well. The link is on my homepage on my bio (some people were confused as to where to find it.)

Thanks for reading! I'd love your concrit, so send it in!


	7. Chapter 7

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Seven

**:i:**

In most stories, Monsieur and Madame Fowl would have come home early, found the stained glass windows shattered, the garden reminiscent of Versailles's during the French Revolution, and Butler a surprisingly poor liar.

Fortunately, this story considers Monsieur and Madame Fowl to be irresponsible parents who consider honeymooning a fine recreational activity, and Artemis had plenty of time to clean up after the Party.

Juliet had coined the term over dinner: "Young people are expected to have parties while their parents are away," she had said suddenly. "Loud, wild parties."

Artemis frowned at his risotto. "Debauchery, I should hope, is not expected of me by Father."

Juliet ignored him, rambling on. "Fowl Manor would be a wonderful place for a party. A bit of a drive, perhaps, but people will drive a very long way for a good party."

Artemis scowled. His risotto was waving a white flag. "I don't _know_ any 'young people' who would willingly engage in such things. All the 'young people' I know are fellow wunderkind who think alcohol is for the organic chemists and copulation for the biologists."

Juliet smiled dreamily. "You can discover many things about yourself at a party: whether you prefer blondes or brunettes, your favorite type of contraception, your tolerance level – very useful for bars, mind you—"

The risotto contemplated suicide. "There will be no parties at Fowl Manor, _and that is final_."

For some reason, the Manor denizens took to calling the assassination attempt 'the Party' after this conversation.

After, Artemis stalked about the Manor looking for some task that would settle his restlessness. Dom, increasingly paranoid about Manor security after the Party, spent much of his time pruning the defenses rather than the flowers. He found Holly in the library. He considered going in and lecturing her on her table manners that night – it had been Holly's first exposure to Italian – but then desisted. She needed every book she could read, he concluded.

The restlessness pervaded him: his eyes, normally on 'roaming' mode, were now somewhere between 'wandering' and 'I want to get lost _now_, damnit!' He found himself plagued by the sudden desire to crack his fingers, a revolting habit he was very vocal about. Perhaps worst of all, he found that his steps echoed in the hallways: if he was not distracted by some thought, he would find himself tracing the interference patterns in the air.

Irritated with himself, he went out into the grounds into the night. The night air was cool, even cold: as he took a breath it was as if the bright, sharp stars from above were piercing his throat and lungs. It was a surprisingly pleasant sort of pain. He took several such breaths and looked up, tracing constellations. He recited their names to himself, and recalled their myths. Medea probably did that every night, tracing the crown of Corona Borealis, or following the sinuous curve of Draco, or perhaps watching the flight of the Pleiades from Orion the Hunter.

He shook his head; the cold air was a slap to the face. The stars were stars; most of them were already dead by the time their light reach Earth. Why care for petty patterns imagined by people half-mad with wine?

He considered Aldebaran, the blood-shot eye of Taurus. _Medea does._

Startled with himself, he blinked, though nobody was there to see. _That's not a reason, that's a statement._

He blinked again. _That's not even a statement, it's an extrapolation._

Thoroughly disgusted with himself, he began walking through the garden. _That's not even an extrapolation, it's a guess. For all I know, she's an imbecile with a laptop and some very rich parents._

He passed chrysanthemums; they were out of season but Dom could… convince the flowers to do some remarkable things. Especially for his sister's sake, considering her marked partiality towards them.

_If my IQ was twenty points lower, I might be stooping to her level. I might be the one chattering on the IM like Keats introduced to Homer, I might be the one buying halfrate assassins and praying that they can follow my plans, I might be the one tempting fate by meeting my rival in the Louvre._

To his left, daffodils; Juliet was a fan of the Cranberries. She had planted them rightbefore she left, thinking he wouldn't catch the worthless reference.

…_Medea can't be such a fool. Surely, she knows who she's facing…_

To his right: a tortured bonsai tree. Dom had planted it when his sister was born, as expected with a prospective pupil of Madame Ko. Juliet had never cared for bonsai, but seeing her every decision laid out in those carefully warped branches made her mind what she did.

_What is her goal? Does she merely wish to torment me? She has the original Fragonard, so why does she want me dead? Is it a preemptive strike, is it revenge for some slight against a family member, or are the two events entirely unrelated?_

He took an abrupt left off of the main path; being so linear troubled him somewhat.

_Good God, why is this irritating me so much? I haven't obsessed over anything this badly since I was fifteen and swore off crime for good. I couldn't concentrate for weeks…_

He stopped. He was in the rose garden; he remembered the events with an unexpected lurch of the stomach. Disgusted with himself, he looked around: the statuette had enough chips to convince anyone of antiquity, the grass of the lawn was decidedly tousled and some of the roses were too dark to justify yellow-pink…

_Does Medea want me dead?_

He clutched at his wrist, almost instinctually. He hadn't thought there had been an arterial spray, especially to the extent the cluster of dark flowers implied. When he took his hand from his wrist, he looked down; the scar was paler than the stars, paler than the moon.

_Does she want to be alone—_

—_is that why she seeks to kill a genius?_

…_envy, fear or spite, that's the only question now…_

His hands clenched. His every thought_—_baseless! circuitous! What was happening to him?

He sat down heavily at a bench; the marble was cool to the touch. He felt intensely aware of everything: the bright, cold points of stars, the great marble slab of blue-black above, the pale, nebulous blurs of the roses, the sharp snap of the air_—_and the sound of his own breathing, steady despite it all.

He was alive.

He looked up at the stars. _Invincible._

He closed his eyes; the world felt so rational, so clean. Medea was not rational; he had been trying to treat her as a rational being, like himself. Doing so had driven his thoughts to irrationality. Simple, really, so simple, like thread through the eye of the needle.

He would eliminate Medea, of course.

He smiled, thin and ghastly like a cat. Yes, he had so many _things_ to take care of—

—on his chest, warmth spreading, a laser pointer_—_

He flung himself to the side blindly, bruising where he collided with the bench but he continued with a roll, against the hedge now, trying to think of an escape but finding none, looked up—

—and breathed in sharply.

No one.

…but he had felt the laser pointer on his chest, the subtle warmth to it, Dom had made sure of that, just in case…

Cautious, he stayed flat to the ground, and moving as little as possible tilted his head up. On the hedge wall a red dot manifested itself among the leaves at chest level. Whatever it was, it was stationary.

He stood up, wincing at the grass stains. Two suits ruined over the course of a day. Terrible, even by criminal mastermind standards—and for the respectable genius, blasphemy.

But he was distracting himself. He projected the laser's source and followed it to the statuette's head_—_the source being one of those ridiculous laser pens, and furthermore, a ridiculous laser pen that he had clearly not noticed upon his entry.

He plucked the pen from its perch. Strange, how it had not fallen during the Party earlier. It had been balanced rather precariously, no?

He frowned. The pen had not been there earlier; it had been placed sometime between this morning and his entry—but how could he miss something as ridiculously obvious as a red light when all was tinted blue and black with the night? It had been placed there, thus, when he had closed his eyes. The grass was soft, and he had not been on the alert. A gag by Juliet, or perhaps Holly. An insensitive gag, perhaps, but a gag nonetheless.

He breathed in, letting the cold air sharpen his thoughts and mind. He had been so ridiculous tonight; first engaging Juliet in a frivolous argument regarding _parties_, then his inability to concentrate, and _then_ a remission to his former self! Even now, his thoughts were scattered to a wind that had no intent on giving them back.

…but the laser light, had it been a gag? Juliet and Holly, both of them, would have wanted to watch something like that; he would have heard them giggling off in the hedges somewhere. It would be rather insensitive, even for Juliet.

On the other hand, why would Medea have a _laser pen_ put there? To mock him? No respectable criminal mastermind would put a _pen_ to tease. An assassination attempt was considered a respectable jest in most circles, or at least a bomb threat.

Not a _laser pen_.

He shook his head. Whoever had put it there, it was getting too cold. He could question Holly and Juliet in the morning; if neither of them did the deed, then Dom could review the security tapes for him.

He began walking out; then stopped. If the assassin had _put_ a laser pen there, what had he _taken_ in return? Some people liked give-take jokes; perhaps Medea liked her humoresques in pairs.

It didn't take him long; of the cluster of bloodstained roses, one of them was missing.

His mind spun with possible symbolisms; yellow rose for friendship, did she know it was him on the IM?_—_dried blood, an old crime of passion of some sort, staining a friendship that could never be?—blood, passion, maybe this is her way of attracting his attention—taking a flower, taking the joy from his life?

He stopped. What was the symbolism of a _laser pen_?

He began walking out, shivering a bit in the cold. He was making much ado about nothing. He would talk to Medea Atreus in the morning; clearly, his reasoning facilities were atrophied.

**:i:**

What do you think? It felt kinda lurchy to me, but hey, oh well. I'm trying to be funny, and it's not working out. I should probably stick to angst.

Sorry about the long delay; I've been having fun with oneshots lately. In any case, I hope it was interesting, if rather uneventful. Another Medea-Artemis conversation next chapter, which will set things going again. Maybe some Monsieur. I just have this vague idea in my head now as to how many chapters between so-and-so event and such.


	8. Chapter 8

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Eight

They had arranged to talk when the 'chariot sets in circe's sky'. It made for a simple arrangement: Circe's home of legend was the island of Aeollo, which most estimates put on the west side of Italy. From there, it was a simple manner to calculate the time that the sun rose over Aeollo.

It was rather early in the morning—really, still nighttime— but he was faithful to his alarm, and he allowed himself enough time to brew a kettle of Darjeeling before starting up the IM service. Medea was not yet on; he amused himself with pinball. After beating Holly's high score, he settled down with the tea leaves and prophesized his own doom thirteen times before Medea came along.

**medeaatreus: **hey

**achilles42:** hey

He winced. _'Hey'_? To say such a thing, even to respond in turn, seemed like a linguistic sin.

**medeaatreus**: hyacinthus bleeds

He blinked at this—she killed a beloved while fighting for their affection? An interesting opener, to say the least. Apollo had been trying to win the affection of a mortal lad named Hyacinthus, but had killed him with a discus on accident. In his grief, he had the anemone flower bloom from Hyacinthus's blood—in modern times, referred to as the 'hyacinth'.

She continued, not caring for response: **medeaatreus:** red anemone blooms

Roses are in short supply in classical mythology. Was she substituting the anemone flower for the bloodstained roses—one of which she had had plucked?

He stared at the screen—did she think he was _dead_?

He typed a hurried message: **achilles42: **why the discus?

**medeaatreus:** it was all the skill i had

He blinked. She was trying to _impress_ him by stealing his favorite painting, and then by trying to _kill_ him?

She evidently thought her assassin would fail to kill him, but perhaps the assassin, being one of lesser quality, had reported his death and had taken the contract money…? It all seemed ludicrous: the death of someone high-profile, let alone by an assassin, would make the headlines immediately, and the lack of such would only indicate that he was still alive! And even then: the assassin had come back to take a rose and plant that laser pen, assumedly on her request, _with Artemis sitting right there_. Would the assassin not report that he was still alive? Why plant a laser pen at all if she thought he was dead? He frowned, and set this aside to ponder later when, perhaps, he had more pieces of the puzzle, or just happened to be in the mood for idle speculation.

**achilles42**: eros or psyche?

His question was simple: was her seeming infatuation physically or psychologically based? It would look suspicious to her, granted, but she seemed fool enough not to notice.

Her answer was simple in turn: **medeaatreus:** morae

The Morae were the 'weavers of fate', as popular mythos calls them. The implication was that she felt that they were 'destined'. Artemis could not help but smirk at the idiocy at this: destiny? No self-respecting genius would even consider such a concept, not in this modern era of evolution and string theory. He was no nihilist, nor was he a strict atheist, being undecided on the matter, but the concept of fate was one that made him curl up in laughter inside, where no one could see.

His respect for Medea was dropping rapidly; what interest he had towards her as a challenge was quickly dropping. Though calculating the gravitational attraction between the king and queen on a chessboard was a challenge, calculating checkmate opportunities between the two was far more satisfying.

Pursing his lips, he continued the query: **achilles42:** elysian, asphodel, or tartarus?

There was a long pause; for a moment, he thought her suspicion had overridden her liking of these social antics. **medeaatreus: **elysian, though desiring asphodel

He stared for a moment: she thought him heroic enough to go to the Greek heaven, but instead wanting to be considered an invalid in the afterlife? If she thought him that modest, she obviously didn't think much at all.

He closed his eyes, considering. She was very intelligent; either that, or she had hired very intelligent people. Being widely read, especially on something as common as Greek mythology, was not a sign of genius, or even of unusual intellect. Besides, wealthy children are given a classical education; wealthy children might have been fascinated with Greek mythology, wealthy children might have intelligent underlings—

He opened his eyes. This was ridiculous; he really knew so little about her… it was all extrapolation. He needed something to get a fix on her; she needed a name, a real name, not some fantastical combination of characters; she needed a home base, where she planned her operations; she needed an Interpol file, since no one was good enough to escape suspicion—Artemis' first page had been at the age of three, hacking into a small Swiss bank since Mother wouldn't let him buy a new laptop. What had she done?

He would do a more complete search for her identity in the morning; for now, he had to tend to his pet nemesis.

**achilles42**: does teireseus hail him?

**medeaatreus**: he calls him brother

He blinked. Teireseus was a sort of seer, always prophesying death and general unpleasantries upon the Greek heroes. She was saying that he was also a seer; that he could predict things from the collapse of an empire to the path of an ant. Was it an allusion to his genius, or did she believe it was a literal gift of prophecy?

It was a badly worded question on his part. He saved this rumination for later.

**achilles42**: do you desire the asphodel or nepenthes?

He was measuring the intensity of her infatuation; was his 'death' enough to drive her to despair and suicide, as might be the case with such a ridiculously impassioned girl, or was it simply a matter of finding other things to think about, a matter of time?

**medeaatreus**: lethe

The Lethe, or the 'river of forgetfulness', was both the source of the nepenthes drink of forgetfulness and the river that bordered Asphodel, which was afterlife of common people where they would forget their memories and fade away over time. Her answer was curious; what did she mean? Just letting things 'drift by her' as befitting a river? Drinking an entire riverful of nepenthes? Or that she simply liked the view?

He grimaced. Using Greek allusions for communicating was ridiculous, nearly as bad as netspeak. It was imprecise, and it was not something even most intellectuals were this well versed in. Sometime later—if he gained her entire confidence, or if there even was a later—he would suggest speaking plain English. It was not as precise as German, perhaps, or as universal as Latin, but even Esperanto was better than _this_—

**achilles42**: boreus blows cold, helios hides

**medeaatreus**: zephyr is kind, selene rises

He had commented on the weather; rather desperate of him, but she had replied. He jotted down the time, date, and the weather conditions she had described—a rising moon and a steady west wind—to perhaps get a remote idea of where she might be. If she was speaking metaphorically, then perhaps it would come to naught; God knows enough of this had already.

All the same, he had better not risk more questions; he had led the majority of the conversation so far. Perhaps what she revealed on her own would prove more useful.

While he waited for her think of a new topic, he began running searches off of what he had gleaned. He set the time for moonrise anytime in the last half hour; that gave him a broad swatch of area in western Canada, America, Mexico and down the Pacific Coast of South America. He had already decided that she was of either Canadian or American origin; he eliminated anything below the Rio Grande.

He had begun setting his search for a 5-15 knot wind when she spoke: **medeaatreus: **are you an only child?

It took him a moment to register that there was nothing remotely Greek in the sentence; when he did, he nearly laughed in sheer relief. Something sensible out of her, finally—even if it was a thoroughly ridiculous question like so. He saw no point in lying about it, so he wrote truthfully: a**chilles42:** yes

**medeaatreus:** i can tell

He stared at the screen, horrified. She was reading _him_! He could only hope she was following the stereotype of only child, versus the true analytic aspect—or perhaps she was simply saying that as a 'joke'?

He distracted himself with a return: **achilles42: **et toi?

**medeaatreus**: i wish

The language made him blink; one moment alluding to Sophocles, the next, a phrase to be found on a sitcom? He would reply in turn, of course, but if Juliet were here she could perhaps advise him on such matters.

**achilles42:** are they… difficult?

**medeaatreus**: my brother's trying to hack into my pc right now

**medeaatreus:** it's annoying

Well, at least she had the technical know how to detect that kind of thing—even if she used the crude word 'annoying' instead of 'irritating'. That was a very useful tidbit of knowledge; if he was going to try and hack into her computer, he had better take all precautions, since she seemed a competent programmer, at least to the point of detecting _who_ was trying to break into her computer, not just that someone was trying to break into it at all. Furthermore, perhaps this was indication of some kind of rivalry between the two; when he was a child, he had often imaged competitions in seeing how could bankrupt the most companies in one day, who could patent the most inventions, who could best mimic Schubert. Was this the kind of relationship she had with a brother?—seeing who could break into whose computer first?

He grinned despite himself. He could imagine suppertime conversations: who could speak in Greek allusions the longest? _'Pass the moly, please.'_

**achilles42**: older or younger?

**medeaatreus**: twin

Fraternal twins; she had a brother of the same age. Perhaps they were partners in crime? His search parameters were getting better and better with every minute.

She continued on:

**medeaatreus:** he acts like he's younger, though

She seemed almost… normal, with such an answer. She was a typical teenager making petty, witless jokes—like breaking the ice with a sledgehammer, versus chiseling a delicate aperture of interest and conversation. However, such… domestic questions was helpful in narrowing his search parameters down. Even if this was foreign ground, he needed to play along, as if he, too, had that feel for normality. He had heard enough of such language in his ventures into society, and in Juliet's company, to duplicate it.

**achilles42:** that bad?

**medeaatreus:** you have no idea

**medeaatreus: **he plays king with the servants and god with the grounds

Artemis smiled. That just fortified the assumption that she came from a wealthy family. The brother seemed somewhat egomaniacal, though her description was probably exaggerated due a familiarity bias. More importantly, the parents were either weak willed, constantly vacationing, or deceased. All three seemed likely at the present: he had better inquire.

**achilles42:** and the parents do not?

A pause. **medeaatreus**: they dare not

Curious—**achilles42:** why not?

Another pause; the topic was obviously difficult for her. Very curious.

**medeaatreus: **he doesn't let them

He frowned. The brother was controlling, then, and had somehow overruled his parents legal and social control over him. This was impressive: though Artemis had gained control over the Fowl assets at a very young age, one of his parents was entirely absent, and the other in no state to be questioning affairs. Even after they had returned to a more functional parental state, he did not retain direct control; he hid his affairs, even his legal ones, so they would not know of his influence at all.

This… this was different. He had rendered his parents submissive to his will; considering that rich people were very rarely the passive sort, this obviously took something—some installation of fear or gratitude in them. Medea seemed more conscious of her brother's dominion; she went out on crusades on her own, such as her ridiculous centering on him and _Girl in Solitude_.

**achilles42**: why don't you rebel?

**medeaatreus:** i'm not strong enough

It was—curious. It was the only word for it. She viewed herself as weaker than a brother that she had previously degraded as behaving like a child? Her view on the matter was so passive, yet her thoughts, her _actions_, all pointed to someone who moved on an aggressive whim.

**achilles42**: why not?

**medeaatreus:** no one understands

She was fatalistic! It made no sense—

**achilles42: **why not?

**medeaatreus:** no one's like me

**achilles42:** hyacinthus?

**medeaatreus:** aspyrtus, not me

Pause, filled with the whirr of the computer and the clicking of puzzle pieces coming together.

**medeaatreus: **i have to go now

**medeaatreus:** he's coming

**medeaatreus:** same time?

**achilles42:** yes

She signed off; he did so in turn, leaned back, and grinned broadly at the ceiling. He was in one of those rare moods when the world was his, and he was happy enough without it.

Something, at least, was beginning to make sense!

She was attempting to begin a private rivalry with him; being bored, she wanted to take part in it on her own, which would be why she did so much of the labor herself, such as make the burqa and handle the Louvre job. This he understood: which he understood; she wanted something to escape to when the brother was especially distasteful. She wanted adventure, and had chosen someone similar in age and—she thought—personality to begin a rivalry. Like she had probably read in some book. Internally, he cursed John le Carré.

He recalled their IM conversation. In response to his query regarding family—"what do you think of aspyrtus?" she had replied cryptically: "who remembers briseis?" The meaning was simple, now: she felt that she was being held captive, as Briseis was, by a powerful figure (coincidentally Achilles). When she had been taken by other men, Achilles did everything in his power to retrieve Briseis, which he eventually did. It fit—Aspyrtus was desperate to keep his sister within his power, and so dealt with his seeming rival as quickly as possible, stopping all other affairs.

The brother—Artemis now referred to him as Aspyrtus, Medea's brother of lore—not wanting his sister to grow too independent, wanted to end any relationship she might have initiated. Aspyrtus either coerced his sister into hiring the assassin with Monsieur, or created the illusion that she did; he did not want him dead at all, fearing retribution from a very powerful family. Rather, Aspyrtus manufactured an elaborate assassin attempt, designed to fail, to try and discourage his sister from further contact—what was the likelihood of the victim of an attempted assassination to befriend the assumed employee of the assassin? Aspyrtus probably considered his tracks covered up well enough that he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of his actions; and a follow up on a foiled assassination attempt would be far less thoroughly investigated than if it had been successful.

The incident last night—? His smile never broke form. Aspyrtus was bringing back a bloodstained rose as proof to his sister that her infatuation was killed. In her impassioned state, she would be easily swayed by arguments as to why the death of such a famous figure had not made headlines. Aspyrtus had left the laser pen, reminiscent of a laser sight on a gun, to remind him that he could have been killed, but he did not want to. Such behavior fit the egotistical portrait that Medea had painted for him.

Her actions were all accounted for.

Medea herself, however, remained an enigma.

Was it even a physical infatuation that had attracted her to him? The thought made him frown. His own sexuality was largely unexplored, but he had decided when he hit puberty to avoid such things until he had nothing better to do with his life. Sex, love, children—they were a different sort of complexity than what interested him now. He was not interested in any of these things, or if he was he had suppressed them thoroughly enough that it didn't matter. There had been implications to it being a physical attraction—her use of Hyacinthus referred to a sexual relationship—but besides that, it was all conjecture. She had never seen him before in person, and the pictures—or, at least in his mind, the _good_ pictures—were unavailable to the world in general. What basis would there be for her to develop a physical infatuation with him, then?

Was it purely emotional?—but what would she know of his emotions? Even though he was not the introverted child he once was, he was still an intensely private young man. Even the media admitted that he appeared emotionless! Did she give any credit to the occasional tabloid on his "dark, dangerous moods"? Did she fancy that below his detached demeanor was an impassioned man? How could she _possibly_ presume to know of his emotions?

Perhaps the infatuation was with the _idea_ of him…? It was more plausible—he supposed he might appear to the romantically inclined mind the epitome of something or other. As he understood it, it was fairly easy to fall under this subconscious trick—when the 'Mr/Mrs Right' proves elusive, one begins to see him/her in people that are, in reality, far from those ideals. It leads to problems, obviously—when the person realizes that the idealized are nothing more than just that, depression is a common result, as well as problems in the relationship. Artemis himself was very careful to get involved in this, whether in personal or professional relationships—for example, it was an obvious security risk if he viewed Dom as the perfect bodyguard who could always save Artemis' life. A similar thing could have formed in Medea's head—_Artemis was brilliant, Artemis was ambitious, Artemis was perfect_, whatever_—_and result in an infatuation.

Yet none of it made sense. Even if Medea had an alternately love-hate feeling towards him, her actions were too erratic to be accounted by that alone. He was not familiar with the feeling of infatuation, besides briefly with a Rachmaninov piano concerto when he was five, but this… this was so strange, so very _bizarre_ he could make nothing of it.

He had had people infatuated with him before: he was young, good looking, wealthy, infamous, intelligent, and he had an Irish accent. European tabloids had run articles on him before, boasting intimate knowledge of his female conquests—they had stopped after one in particular had implicated him with Juliet due to a purely coincidental bankruptcy. Many of girls of the frivolous variety had a sort of fascination with him as a result. Young women would often recognize him in the street suck in and sway as they passed him by; or, when surrounded by a gaggle of friends, giggle like a bad case of dementia.

He was quite comfortable with the idea of 'fangirls', perhaps surprising considering his antisocial tendencies, they massaged his ego quite nicely, as long as they were kept at arms length, or preferably, Dom's armslength. It was not, by any means, something he encouraged; however, it made for amusing ruminations when the issue was brought up. Perhaps it was annoying at times, but the time when an invisible presence was needed for his favored activities was over.

He had never had a fellow genius infatuated with him; there had been a young flutist in his two year stay at a university, with whom he had consented to a 'lunch date'. It had been… interesting, he supposed, the sort of rush to the head one gets in such occasions, but nothing he would like to repeat. There was nothing in friendship or physical intimacy with a fellow genius that a simple acquaintance could not get: a stimulating conversation, an exchange of ideas, a rivalry. Though this was not a perfect rule, other young genii seemed disinclined to mix intellectual contact with other genii with the more… social things.

Yet—here she was.

He looked outside. Dawn.

Yawning, he shut the computer down, and went downstairs in search of breakfast.

**:i:**

Well... more chat about Medea. No guarantees on the accuracy of his speculations.

CC is, as always, appreciated. This story will be beginning to get its dark tone after this chapter, so be ready. The next chappie will probably involve some conversations with Dom, Holly and Juliet, maybe a brief chat with Medea, and if I have room I'll get into The Return of the Native... er, the return of Angeline and Timmy.

**randompineapplelady**: you have been nominated as a judge for the Orion Awards, which are AF fanfiction awards. I have links to the forum and the main site on my bio. If you can give either me or one of the other Judges your contact information, we'd love to see you involved! You've come highly reccomended, and you'd be a wonderful part of our staff... at the very least, we'd like it if you could help nominate goodfics for it at the forum. Really, you've been a marvelous reader and reviewer to just about everyone in the fandom.

For everyone else: the Orion Awards are for you too - you can join the forums and help nominate fics, as well as participate in the PC voting later this year. The forums are just general fun as well, and we're very friendly. I hope to see all my readers there!

As always, comentary will be in my livejournal.


	9. Chapter 9

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Nine

**:i:**

Juliet had the debilitating habit of seeing through Artemis' moods; debilitating because the result was a massive loss of self esteem.

"So," she began, passing him the teapot, "you look antsy today."

He poured the hot water into the waiting teacup. "'Antsy'," he replied, "is a thoroughly crude Americanism. I suggest you use a more appropriate word before accusing me of a nonexistent mood."

She accepted the teapot's return and returned it to the kitchen, replying over her shoulder, "Fine. You look 'antsy' in an American sort of way. Mind telling me why?"

"I talked to Medea this morning."

He heard a laugh from the kitchen, and he scowled down at his Darjeeling. Juliet would think a nuclear holocaust amusing. "Talked to Medea?" she mocked, returning with a tray of toast, "_talked _to Medea? Why not 'communicated', or 'corresponded'?" She set the tray down in front of Artemis. "So unprofessional of you."

His tempter rose with the steam of his tea. "'Talk' is a very professional word. For example: we are 'talking' now."

"But this is personal," Juliet countered, returning to the kitchen for marmalade. She continued on, her voice drifting through the open door, "In fact, this is _so_ personal, I'd even like to use the word—'chatting'." She giggled at her own wit.

"_Au contraire_," Artemis said to the kitchen, "you are a chef preparing her employee's breakfast in a purely professional capacity."

"If it was in a _professional_ capacity," Juliet countered, returning with a pitcher of marmalade for him and OJ for herself, "I wouldn't bother getting up at five in the morning to cater to your little whims."

"If it wasn't in a professional capacity, you wouldn't be paid so well."

Juliet scowled, and sat down opposite Artemis. They were using the informal breakfast room, furnished with small, café style tables and wicker chairs. The room looked out across the grounds through a series of large sliding windows and doors, currently in place to prevent the dawn coolness from sapping Artemis of his wit. When retracted, the room was continuous with a small balcony similarly furnished.

Artemis looked out across the view; dawn was breaking over the grounds. The hedges of the garden maze, usually a deep green comparable to a rather opaque emerald, had peach highlights on them, as if someone had liberally splashed the place with Juliet's orange juice.

His eyes focused on one cell in particular; it was not until Juliet noted this fixation that he turned his gaze away from the rose garden. "My _talk_ with Medea," he began, "resulted in some more information."

"I'm sure it has," Juliet said, sipping her orange juice. She winked over her rim of cup.

Artemis decided to play the adult and ignore her. "I used this information to create some more specific search terms," he continued on, a note of self satisfaction entering his voice. "We're narrowing in on her."

"Oh, good."

He scowled. "You should be more interested in this."

"It's not that interesting."

"It's your job."

"You know perfectly well that I can quit anytime I bloody well please," she countered. "I'm only doing this out of sisterly affection."

_No_, Artemis said to himself, _you're doing this because you're a Butler at heart, and you know it. _But he kept the words to himself, and continued on with his languid breakfast.

The rest of it passed between them with what Juliet would refer to as 'chatting'—the status of the hydroponics orange trees, the ingredients of the homemade marmalade, the crack on the pitcher from whence it came (which Artemis attributed to her carelessness, and Juliet to his bad habit of making himself breakfast.)

Holly joined them once the sun had risen sufficiently that the room was shadowed by the Manor's eaves, not wishing for her magic to bleach from her bones. She took the chair between the two of them, after stacking some pillows on the seat so she was at eye level with the two humans. After nearly falling into the marmalade pitcher in her attempt to reach the toast, she let loose a small tempest of Gnommish swear words.

Artemis flinched at the gratuities. "Was that necessary?"

"Completely," Holly snapped, but before she had a chance to upend the contents of the pitcher onto his head, Juliet intervened:

"Artemis, your Gnommish lessons were shoddy. _I _never learned those words."

Artemis sipped his tea. "That was the Atlantean dialect, if I'm not mistaken, which did not seem necessary at the time considering our… target would not be the city fairy sort. Mostly, however, it was to avoid unnecessary confusion on your part."

Holly swore again as she spilled orange juice all over the table. Artemis flinched again, and Juliet grinned. "See? I didn't know that one either." She rose, going to the kitchen and returning with a washcloth. "Now I have to _clean_ the table, so I have an excuse to use it. So—"

Holly grinned maliciously into what orange juice had made it into her cup as Artemis winced again. "Delicate ears, Mud Boy?"

"Mud _Man_," Artemis corrected idly, and changed the topic. "Where's Dom?"

"Debugging the camera system," Juliet replied. "Evidently, something got into it remotely last night."

He blinked, and asked abruptly, "Do either of you own laser pens?"

Holly shook her head, more at the sloppy dressing of her toast than at him. Juliet, on the other hand, nodded exuberantly. "Yeah! I got this really cool one in Chicago, remember? I stole it from Spiro's reception desk—"

"Besides that?"

Juliet shook her head. "I don't think so. Why?"

Artemis sipped his tea. "Two peculiar things happened to me last night. First, in the gardens, I found that a rose—one stained from my… arterial spurt—was missing. Second, I found this laser pen in that very garden, balanced on the statuette that I had hidden behind, the beam directed at chest level." He drew the laser pen from his pocket; it was encased in a Ziploc bag.

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Holy asked suddenly, her bad mood sharpening her words to an edge. "That could have been your _life_—"

"Do you recall my question regarding laser pen possession?"

They both nodded.

"I initially thought that it was a prank—one in particularly bad taste, which is not below either of you."

Holly and Juliet rose in protest; Artemis waited patiently for him to heed the dismissive wave of his hand. "To no matter, now. Clearly, the pen was planted. How shall we proceed?"

"Laser pen first," Juliet replied neatly, and continued headlong: "Did you check for fingerprints?"

"I dusted it, yes—there wasn't even a partial print, though, truth be told, I didn't expect anything. Even an amateur would wear gloves."

"What _type_ of gloves?"

"Latex, by the residue—disposable. The 'UniSeal' brand, to be specific, though that only tells us the price."

"What about the laser pen type?"

He grimaced. "I did a search. It appears to the 'dollar store' sort—cheap, brandless, and thus thoroughly untraceable."

"What about footprints?"

"On gravel paths and a trimmed lawn? Pointless. It would be impossible to detect even shoe size."

Juliet threw her hands up in despair. "Fine. If you've already checked everything, why bother to ask us?"

"Because occasionally, people other than _you_ offer ideas." He looked pointedly at Holly.

Holly glared at her toast after some marmalade slid off the back end, falling to her plate with a dull _plop_. Temporarily giving up on the prospect of a nonresistant breakfast, she set the toast down. "Why—" She hesitated, then began again. "Why a _laser pen?_"

Artemis' lips curled. "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking."

"Something you don't know!" Juliet crowed triumphantly, and somewhat inappropriately.

"There are plenty of things I don't know," Artemis corrected, setting his tea down. "I am perfectly willing to admit that. I am not so arrogant as to claim expertise in an area in which I am deficient."

Juliet grinned like a kindergarten jack-o-lantern—wide, sloppy, and in very bad taste. It was difficult to believe, at times like these, that she was in her mid twenties. "You rarely _admit_ being 'deficient', actually. You want to keep up the appearance of being a perfect know-it-all—you just hate the idea of appearing utterly clueless."

"You would be a terrible psychologist," Artemis commented lightly. Before Juliet could rebuttal, he steered the topic back on course. "But we digress. The laser pen, if you will?"

Holly swirled the contents of her cup, glaring at the orange juice in general as it sloshed around. "What do _you_ think of it?"

Artemis paused, collecting his thoughts. "I can see no particular symbolism of the laser pen itself, except possibly as a reminder of a laser sight. Its placement in the rose garden indicates that, if it was a goad, it was directed at the… events that occurred therein. Why such a clumsy attempt at a provocation would be made, I'm not certain. Why would anyone wish to attract the wrath of the Fowl dynasty?"

"And…?"

A glare was sent Juliet's way. "To be perfectly blunt, it makes no sense to me."

"So?" Holly asked, slicing her toast viciously with a knife.

Artemis blinked at Holly's abrupt comment. "What do you mean?"

Holly glared at him sullenly. "So what if it makes no sense?"

Taken somewhat aback, he replied, "People, and their actions, are logical: even if they initially appear to be irrational." He steepled his fingers; despite his abhorrence of psychologists, he enjoyed lecturing on psychology. "Emotional motives like pride, love, depression, greed—though they may seem unpredictable, they _make sense. _They combine in varying degrees to form complexes, which in turn determine the entire psyche of a particular being. They are thus predictable. I only need to determine the make up of this psyche, however complex: then, when her recent interactions with her environment are taken into account, like the influence of a family member, or a bribe, Medea will become predictable."

"Why?"

The bluntness of her question irritated him somewhat, as if it had somehow violated his perfect logic. "That's simply the way the mind works—actions are derived from thoughts, those thoughts are derived from the psyche, which are in turn derived by the _reactions_ to the environment around them, and within them. Thus, if I know the environment, and I know the psyche, I can derive the thoughts and future actions: I can _predict _them."

"Why?"

He tapped his fingers on the table to the rhythm of a Wagner, somewhat testily. "Logic, the utilization of the mind, pure reason, rationality, take your pick—call me Hellenistic, but those are all vastly preferable to intuition as a method of conclusion."

Holly squinted at him over the rim of her cup; Juliet was thoroughly lost, and amused herself by picking at her nail polish. "How can you predict the actions of something infinitely complex?"

"People are not infinitely complex," Artemis countered. "Rather, they are relatively simple. Compare: there are laws that govern the universe; the universe makes sense. There are laws that govern the psyche; the psyche makes sense. I only need help with this initial derivation, and then she is 'solvable', in the sense of inputting variables into an equation and emerging with a solution, a prediction. Granted, I am no Hari Seldon: the complexes that make up her psyche are not complete, and are imperfect, but they are close enough that the estimate is the solution, rather like finding the area under the curve. You can use smaller and smaller rectangles, or you can find the asymptote of the derivation. _It makes sense_."

"Quantum makes sense?"

"It does to me," Artemis snapped, somewhat surprised Holly even knew the word. "Everyday, more and more laws are uncovered that govern the nuances of the quantum, the nuances of the very _universe—_more laws that come closer to the definitive Theory of Everything. Such laws exist; it is only a matter of time before we discover them. So it is with Medea."

"Even in what science has explained," Holly said eventually, "there are still anomalies."

Artemis frowned; his mind was getting an unexpected work out from an unexpected source. However, he put Holly's lack of understanding to his inarticulateness. He was used to expressing himself to his peers, not to the common mind. "There are, granted, things that remain enigmas in the circles of what we consider explained, but the basic laws are there, and the gist of the finer laws are there as well. Let me reiterate: these laws will come eventually. Even human scientists realize that the universe is almost entirely defined, and fairy scientists already have String Theory down pat."

"So," Holly said slowly, "though the universe itself is not entirely explained, people are?"

"Yes."

Holly leaned over and upended the marmalade pitcher over his head in one smooth move. "Were you able to predict that?"

It was too much: dripping in marmalade and proven wrong in one fell blow? Artemis was speechless, and Juliet, finally understanding something in the passage, giggled madly.

"That doesn't count!" Artemis protested after wiping marmalade from his eyes. "That wasn't premeditated—"

"Actually," Holly replied, "I've been thinking about doing that all morning. You see, I'm in a terrible mood, and I need an outlet. Predictable. Using a convenient, yet thoroughly satisfying device, also predictable. The moment of execution, however—" Holly grinned, for the first real time that morning. "Unpredictable. I could have made my point at any time."

"I had predicted it with sufficient time to close my eyes," he said stiffly. "So it _was_ predictable."

"Liar," she said, and upended the orange juice over his head as well.

**:i:**

Well... er...

Sorry about the conversation between Holly and Artemis. I am truly, really, sincerely, the most inarticulate person in the world. I had all of this wonderful reasoning and logic laid out for Artemis, and I can't right it out. It's repetitious and terrible, and no amount of editing seems to be able to fix it. For that, I apologize. I hope that _someone_ noticed that I was trying to mix thought provoking stuffwith humor, and maybe get a grin out of it.

Besides that... another transition chapter. I had intended to get into some good stuff - Artemis starting to narrow in on her - but I ended up having too much fun with Holly & Artemis and the OOC!Juliet. So, again, sorry. CC much appreciated, but are reviews are lovely too.


	10. Chapter 10

I N F E R N O

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Ten

**:i:**

After a long and thorough shower, Artemis emerged from his private suite of rooms. Oddly enough, considering how he normally took such disgraceful things, he was smiling.

The smile of Artemis Fowl was not the rare occurrence it used to be: perhaps he still smiled less than the average individual, but then, his smiles were not of the gratuitous variety.

This particular smile was broader than Artemis' usual, and it seemed to stay on his rather longer than usual. Even the familiar austere of the Fowl family portraits failed to quench his almost boyish excitement.

After all, he knew who Medea Atreus was, now.

Smiling, he walked blissfully on.

Nearly a decade ago, he had come before a wall in his criminal activities: finding the low-key person of interest amidst the billions of nameless, faceless, traceless people in the world.

Young Artemis had an intense fascination with programming. This, combined with the current problem, led to his solution: his brainchild, the Diana program. It could accept virtually every input information, from the type of hat worn on a particular day to eye color to shampoo preferences. With the most complete information possible was provided, Diana would do the most complete scan of the internet possible, going not only through the spidered sites of Google, but also through all computers currently connected to the internet and their archives: documents, video footage, emails, credit card usage etc.

Diana, though immensely complicated, was second only to the power of his own mind in efficacy.

However, even with some of the most powerful computers in the world housed in Fowl Manor, it took several hours to complete any given search. Considering that it was pouring over worlds of data, he thought that he could cut Diana a little slack in this.

His search, inputted during his last conversation with Medea, was now complete.

He found himself before the War Room, so christened by a considerably younger (and less witty) Artemis.

He took a deep, shuddering breath: _to think_, he thought, _all that lies between me and Medea is this here door— _

The smile would be unseemly; he forced it from his face, and entered the room.

Juliet, Butler and Holly were already arrayed around the massive oak table. Before each of them were a personal monitor, keyboard and stylus, all of which could retract back into the table to leave the surface as pitted and scarred as the day Hugo de Fóle hewed the boards with his broadsword. The chairs, a somewhat more refined style, were designed with thrones in mind. Holly looked like a doll between the solid armrests; Butler, on the other hand, looked as if it was carved to fit. Juliet just looked out of place: despite her valuable input into War Room conferences, she insisted on bubblegum and slippers.

Holly was playing pinball on her screen when he entered; as he walked to his seat, he checked her score. A smile reaffixed itself on his face as he sat down in his own chair. His was specifically designed to massage the users ego: though also built of oak, it had intricate rosewood, ebony and mahogany inlays, and it was bigger. Far bigger. It was the sort of throne Henry VI and his current wife could fit together in, with room for the executioner. And besides: his seat had _buttons. _

Buttons, he had learned, were very useful things. The larger and brighter, the more interesting the effect. If they glowed, he could be assured of sufficiently mind-wasting entertainment that he could forget his purpose in the War Room for a while.

Alas, there was no one expendable at the table. He pressed a prominent blue one with an inscribed sun in yellow: a large screen slid into view at the head of the conference table.

"Let me present 'Medea Atreus'," Artemis said, quite melodramatically, and pressed another button. Diana's search summary appeared, and no words were needed.

**:i:**

Her name was Natalie Ferguson, daughter of William and Tabitha Ferguson. She was born the fifth of January in an Edmonton hotel, three months premature. Her brother, Ryan Ferguson, was born later that same day in the local hospital. After two weeks the twins were released, and the new parents returned to their ancestral home in the high mountain country of Alberta.

It was as ancestral as the Americas could be: Daniel Ferguson immigrated from Scotland in the early nineteenth century, the youngest of five sons, and had planned on fur-trapping in the Rockies. However, fate—or rather, his exceptional vision—intervened: he spotted the glitter of gold dust in a small mountain stream. Within five years, he was amongst the richest men in Canada. Used to the poor life a youngest son is usually heir to, he took his opportunity and reaped it to his fullest, investing this money in the railroad industry. Though this did not bear fruits in his lifetime, his children became heir to a fantastic fortune as the great age of railroads steamed its way across North America. Born businessmen, not fur trappers, the new Ferguson generation continued the cycle of investment, focusing intently on the railroads that had made them rich, and the vibrant industries that had flourished alongside it.

When the age of the railroads came to an end, the Fergusons did little to change. Though their wealth was still great, pure investment could no longer sustain them. Some became lawyers, some politicians, and the Ferguson fortune slowly dwindled.

William Ferguson had inherited a dying empire. Scarce out of college, there was little he could do: too honest for a lawyer, too headstrong for a politician, too generous for a businessman. Forced by debt, he began selling the Ferguson assets. A poor marriage—to the Saskatchewan farm girl Tabitha, who had barely even graduated high school—only hastened this spiral.

With the birth of the children, things seemed as if they would only continue spiraling downhill. Yet—yet strangely enough, they did not. Six years after the birth of the children, the Ferguson assets had the first financial growth in nearly two centuries, from converting their oldest asset, the local railroad industry, to tourism: the trains now took scenic tours of the Ferguson holdings in the Alberta mountains.

Eight years after, the Fergusons began to buy back previously sold assets, even land that had been converted to state parks, and adding it to the rapidly growing tourism empire. The ghostown where Daniel had sold his furs was partially refurbished and made into a historic getaway. Tourists could pan for their own gold in the nearby streams. Mustangs ran wild across the grand foothills, and capturing them became a sport to rival the big game hunting that also thrived on the Ferguson estate.

Ten years after, the Fergusons became incorporated—Ferguson Enterprises. Their stock became a hot commodity. Even Artemis had invested, it turned out.

During this time, the twins had seemed sated in a local, coed private school. Their grades were exceptional, their talent renowned in the locally renowned. At the ages of six, eight and ten, Natalie performed in public recitals that were noted in several newspapers as "CD-worthy" and the like, though she did not compete. At the age of twelve, Natalie and Ryan were withdrawn from the private school and brought back to the home: though the state record indicated that they were homeschooled, Artemis noted that no textbooks were ever shipped to the Ferguson household.

After, the record became sketchy, with fewer anecdotes. Natalie first coined the pseudonym of 'Medea Atreus' at age fourteen to enter a local poetry contest. The presence of either Medea or Natalie was noted worldwide for the next three years, ranging from a rug merchant in the Beirut medina to the audience of the Sydney Opera House, though nothing conspicuously illegal. The affair with the Fragonard appeared to be the first truly interesting event that had ever happened to her in all her short seventeen years.

But then, Diana was an imperfect creation.

**:i:**

Artemis was vaguely aware of a thudding heartbeat. _Natalie Ferguson_. The name lacked the music of her pseudonym, yet somehow, it had a history of its own, something so much more substantial than Diana's bland text.

Text. All text.

He stilled his irate heart and brought a picture to the mainscreen. Natalie Ferguson was not the exotic creature the burqa implied. Indeed, she looked like little more than a watercolor stain, a Monet bleached by the sun, or a Morisot left out in the rain. Her hair curled in little wisps around her face, so pale they might have been white. Her skin was similarly insipid, and though a little blotchy in places seemed unblemished. Her eyes were that awkward color between white and gray, a cloud that didn't know whether to rain or evaporate, and in all of the pictures he displayed, they had the odd habit of looking right through the camera into the eyes, the _soul_ of the photographer…

His first thought was something between amusement and excitement. Of course—_Girl in Solitude_ had that same expression on her face that seemed default to Miss Ferguson. The reason for her obsession. _Girl _was full of lucid contrasts, the red of the roses and the yellow of the daffodils, the black of the hair and the white of the face, the blue of the sky and the green of the garden…

It was a moody piece, for a nondescript painter like Fragonard.

Juliet interrupted his thoughts: "She's rather young for a criminal, isn't she?"

"I was far younger than her when _I _started," Artemis replied.

"A late bloomer?" Holly suggested.

Artemis pattered on the keys briefly, then looked up. "I don't think so," he said, frowning. "The brother, Ryan. CEO since the age of sixteen. Illegal, even in Canada, but overlooked. I have little doubt that he engaged in other questionable activities for his age. His sister would be little different."

"Why not?" Holly asked. "Twins aren't always alike, you know."

Artemis sighed, and looked up. "Fraternal twins, no, I agree. Their natures can be completely different. However, if they are not twins—" He smiled suddenly at the thought. "I don't suppose _East of Eden _will come into any of your minds, but if they are not quite _twins_..." He continued his typing; his smile seemed almost malevolent. "There are two ways to determine whether they are fraternal or not: to look at the medical records, which I am disinclined to trust, or to look at the phenotypes, which is my own judgment, and thus very trustworthy."

"Phenotype?" Juliet asked, frowning. Genetics had not been a required class with Madame Ko.

"What they look like, with respect to each other and to their parents. If they are _similar_, they are fraternal twins. If they are very different, they are..." Again, the smile, curving like a hunter's bow. "... not twins." He considered his screen briefly, then pattered some more. Two pictures appeared side by side on the overhead view: Natalie and Ryan, brother and sister, and as different as dawn and dusk.

It was a school picture of an eleven-year-old Miss Ferguson; her face was softened somewhat, and her eyes a little bluer, but otherwise she was much the same. Ryan, however, was nothing like her: his hair was a mussy brown, obviously uncared for, and his skin was more tan, though still pale. The most strikingly different thing about him was his eyes: brown, dark brown, hard and sharp like a cedar splinter. Childhood had not softened him in the way it had for his sister.

The facial structure—delicate, as if a bird's—remained the same between the two of them. Checking photographs of the parents, it was obvious that both children borrowed from _both_ of the parents.

"Fraternal twins, then," Artemis said, frowning slightly. "However, that does not go to say that they are completely different. Criminality is in the blood, not in the mind with a whim. If Miss Ferguson would steal a painting, then I am sure the brother has done less innocent things."

Even as he said his words, he recalled hers: _he plays king with the servants and god with the grounds… i'm not strong enough… no one understands… _

_…he's coming… _

He shivered involuntarily. Ryan was, clearly, a potential threat.

But better not let them know. His suspicions regarding Ryan were unfounded, and one must start the fire before the fish is fried. "To no matter. We have a blueprint of their grounds, and the Fergusons seem… lax in their security." His eyes developed an odd glint. "I believe it is time to point out the weaknesses."

The War Room was quiet for a moment, but the silence subsided into the gentle chatter of planning, and then into the fine tuned

And the words: the words echoed through his mind…

…_he's coming… _

**:i: **

When Artemis next entered his suite of rooms, he checked the IM. 'Medea' was not online, nor had she left him any offline messages. All the better; her presence would only tempt him to gloat.

There were a few items he had to pack for the Lear jet. Though Butler would take care of the… supplies, there were some things only Artemis could to attend to.

His clothes, for one. He selected his best. No use looking grubby, even if the security cameras would never capture a pixel of his immaculate aesthetics. His toiletries next, since Juliet always seemed to pack the wrong shampoo. Shuddering, he remembered last time—the only time—he had allowed that. He had walked around smelling like 'orange blast' for a full six hours before he found the opportunity to rinse that atrocity out of his hair.

And then—the painting.

_Girl in Solitude_.

He went to it, standing there like a lover in awe. It was a beautiful painting: exquisite, really. He understood why such a pale, seemingly insipid girl would love such a thing. Plain girls always long to be roses.

Quickly, he rolled up the painting and set it near the door. Natalie Ferguson was no less a fool than Medea Atreus.

**:i:**

I hesitated before posting this, since this chapter is the one that really sets "Medea" in stone—and her brother.

The names of "Natalie" and "Ryan" were obtained by closing my eyes, opening a baby name book to a random page, and jabbing my finger down. So elaborate mythological explanations, no naming them after some obscure historical figure. I don't see the point of all that… really, do you think a parent has any idea how their kid will turn out and have some _perfect_ name to describe them? The person defines the name, not the other way around. Only when a person tries to select a name to describe themselves is that changed—like "Medea Atreus". Just thought I should mention it.

In any case, I hope she doesn't appear Sueish at all. I'm planning on doing some sketches of how I visualize her, so if you can suffer through my poor drawing skills, you may like to compare how I see her to your own vision.

I have the next four chapters complete, so after this chapter has trickled down the page I'll post the next one – in a week or so, in other words. Unless I get carried away with editing Teh Invasion. :D

CC much appreciated – and this chapter, especially CC on "Medea Atreus" thus far.


	11. Chapter 11

**I N F E R N O**

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Eleven

**:i:**

The ride on the Lear was smooth; a flawless performance by Holly, who had stubbornly insisted that her piloting skills extended well beyond LEP shuttlepods. Perhaps she was right, but Artemis had no inclination to tell her so.

Fortunately, gloating was not particularly high on Holly's priority list. Upon arrival, she peered into his private cabin and clicked the lights on and off a few times to get his attention. When he glanced up with a reprimand on his lips, she grinned, turned the lights off, and left.

After stumbling over an ottoman, he found his way to the door and went out into the main corridor of the jet. The cockpit appeared to be vacant, but the rear parlor emitted the distinctive sound of chatter.

Entering, Artemis found that Juliet had already donned her gear; all black leather and titanium. She had insisted that she should at least look good while doing dirty work. It wasn't anything terribly flashy, and Artemis had insured that every little aesthetic flourish had a purpose. For example, most of the leather was not real leather at all: rather, a waterproof, fireproof, airtight, stainproof, acid- and base- resistant polymer that had multiple patents on it, and still managed to retain that leather shine. There were also liberally placed titanium studs that doubled as small capsules for the odd object—poisons, explosives, disinfectant, the like.

Artemis considered Juliet's gear his best work in textiles. Asides from the aforementioned features, it also contained modified—and improved—versions of the fairy equipment he had accumulated over the years. There was no longer any need for a throat-patch for audio, for example, since the same audio equipment had been incorporated into the weave of the faux leather polymer of the high collar. Similarly, a separate insertion of the eye-cam was now unneeded, since a thin, mucus-like film could be sprayed into the eye once the helmet was donned. It could not be removed without the antiserum, nor could it be detected by any known sensor: the film consisted of a series of nanobots which could function independently or as a group. They would detect incoming light and transmit it on high-frequency radio waves, encrypted, to Artemis' receiver. A separate cam foil sheet was also unnecessary, since the fabric itself could function as cam foil. A helmet, full retractable into the catsuit, could purify virtually any air with its selectively membranous polymer—rendering bulky, separate filters obsolete. Though perhaps wingless and a little more gaudy than the LEP uniforms, such features made it an extremely useful tool to the Butlers—and to Artemis.

Foaly's latest LEP jumpsuit design mimicked Artemis' in many ways; when questioned, he had insisted that he was entirely unaware of Artemis' model.

There was one further feature worth commenting on: two modes, which Artemis had named 'stealth' and 'social' modes. Stealth was used in virtually every mission; full features, from the small, ovoid helmet to the titanium-reinforced gloves to the thin,

'Social' mode had fewer features, but with it on Juliet could pass as a civilian in a city environment. The helmet retracted, the camfoil played some tricks, and Juliet was wearing black leather boots, tights, a pleated leather skirt and a revealing tank top. Perhaps the civilian would stick out a bit, but gorgeous blondes in revealing tank tops generally do. Black was a common color, and beautiful blondes were really not that rare. It was an easy, transition-free camouflage; all it required was a whispered command.

Alberta's small, rural towns were a far cry from the urban environments social was dsigned for. Even amongst tourists, Juliet would stick out like a model in a leper colony. Though the solution was simple—wearing slacks and a loose shirt—it still required disposal. It was a note of sloppiness that irked Artemis to no end. Camfoil clothes could only do so much.

Juliet grinned at Artemis as he entered. "Can I wear this to my next match?"

"If you can get it by the referees," Artemis replied, taking a seat. "Does anything need adjusting?"

She giggled and opened her mouth to reply. "Well, my bra—"

"Nevermind," Artemis interrupted. He spared a moment to look at Juliet; in her mid-twenties, she was frankly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Juliet had grown out of her green mascara and glitter and into her own: no model could quite imitate that careless beauty that she had developed. Her eyes, large and blue, were framed by naturally dark lashes, and her lips smiled as quickly as they pouted. Her skin was smooth and tanned, and an excited flush was present. Furthermore, her curves were only accentuated by the skintight design of the catsuit, and black was a color that looked very, very good on her.

Somewhere in Artemis' head, a neuron fizzled.

He recovered before Juliet—or worse, Holly—noticed. "Is everyone ready?"

"Everyone but you," Holly noted primly.

Artemis scowled, but the remark was true: he hadn't prepared for the mission in any way but mentally. But then—there was little enough for him to do. He had little exposure in the plan, since once they were inside the Ferguson house, he would simply stay in place and guide Juliet through the mission—and besides, he would be guarded by Butler.

He had already donned his suit; he needed to look snappy for this, even if the security cameras would never catch them in the act. However, certain… items needed to be applied.

He reached for the satchel Butler provided and began withdrawing those 'items': the spray-on mucus eye cam, the cuff link transmitters, the computerized watch…

And when all was done and donned, Juliet looked him over with an appraising eye. "And yet," she began, "you look as dorky as before."

"The correct term is 'sophisticated'," Artemis corrected, standing up. He returned the appraisal: "And you manage to look thoroughly unprepared. I assume you've been discussing the entry plan while I was in my cabin?"

"Of course," Juliet said flippantly. She clenched her fist and punched the armchair's pillow; even after she withdrew her hand, an indent remained. "It's as overly complicated as it always is."

Artemis snorted in disbelief, exiting the room. Juliet, Holly and Butler followed. "If you had any choice, you would go to the front door, knock, and proceed to beat the living daylights out of whatever unfortunate soul answered."

Juliet shrugged, following. "Nothing wrong with it."

Artemis reached the Lear's door; outside, a brisk Alberta day awaited—and the outskirts of the Ferguson land. "Everything is wrong with it," he replied, checking over his own apparel. "The second person you met would have a gun, and would not be inclined to ask any questions."

Juliet rolled her eyes. "Don't I have a gun, too?"

Artemis turned, and smiled. "Are you will to bet your life that you can fire before he can?"

"'He'?"

Artemis opened the door; the mountain air rushed in, as cool as a cold shower, and just as startling. "Aspyrtus," he replied, and stepped outside.

**:i:**

The set-up was simple enough; a small, trackless vehicle brought them from the alpine meadow they had landed in to a ridge overlooking Ferguson Manor. From the vantage point, they could trace the long, winding road that ran through the high fir forest, curving with the contours of the mountainside.

Though Ferguson Manor was only in the foothills of the Rockies, those 'hills' would qualify as mountains to any flatlander. The summits were smooth and flawless, all graceful lines and elegant contours. The very forms were grand; when taken as a whole, the sprawling mountainsides were magnificent.

Ferguson Manor was like a wound in the valley bottom; the bright green of the grounds was a scar, and the speck-of-a-Manor was a scab.

Artemis' lip curled. He had expected more than _that_.

But blueprints never lied; as they began to descend through the forest, they could catch glimpses of the growing Manor through the trees.

"It doesn't look anything like Fowl Manor," Holly observed, slapping a hemlock sapling to the side.

"Of course not," Artemis replied, taken aback. "Fowl Manor is a tenth century castle constructed by—"

Holly made a face. "Spare me the history lesson."

Artemis scowled, bending down to inspect a fungus. "My point _is_, Ferguson Manor is _not_ a manor in the proper sense. The structure is entirely wood, with only recent additions of sheetrock, insulation, _et cetera_. One cannot expect it to be nearly the size of a stone castle, nor its match for all aesthetic purposes."

"Fowl Manor always struck me as dull," Juliet cut in. "Old and dull."

Artemis plucked the mushroom; _Amanita muscaria_. "Your _cities_ are hardly things of beauty."

"But castles are _boring_." Juliet was balancing on a fallen log, walking down its length. Her silhouette, slim and curving, made stark contrast to the straight lines of the trees. "Cities, on the other hand—"

Holly kicked the log hard enough that it lurched to the side. Juliet, for all her training, lost her balance and fell into some scrub on the other side. "Cities reek, and castles are a waste of time. Let's leave it at that."

Juliet was disinclined to argue, in her present condition. Artemis, however inaccurate her statement was, felt that silence was a preferable state, when compared to tumbling through the underbrush dirtying his immaculate clothes.

**:i:**

When they reached the edge of the grounds, Artemis halted; the rest of the group followed suit. "Are there any questions before we proceed?"

"Yes," Holly immediately said. "Why am _I _not doing anything?"

Artemis spared her a withering glance. "You _are_; if things run afoul, you will fly Juliet to safety."

"That's not what I mean," Holly said crossly, folding her arms across her chest. "You and Juliet—you're getting all the fun in this."

"I don't pay you exorbitant sums of money to risk life and limb," Artemis replied, gesturing towards Juliet. "The only reason why I'm not sipping 1760 in the Lear right now is because someone needs to coordinate all of this from the _inside_."

She looked squarely at him. "And the only reason _I'm_ not sitting on my derrière in Haven giving Sool Hell is because I think you're going to get yourself _killed_ since you aren't nearly as careful about all this as you ought to be—"

"Have faith in genius," he replied with a laugh. "I'm much more reliable than God." With that, he withdrew a camfoil blanket from his knapsack and threw it over himself; all that remained of Artemis Fowl was a faint shimmer, stirring like a careless wind towards Ferguson Manor.

Juliet grinned, and turned towards Holly. "Duty calls," she said sweetly, fading into the grounds as the camfoil of her catsuit activated.

Butler turned towards Holly. He gave her a reassuring, albeit bone-jarring, pat on the back, and drew his own camfoil blanket over his great body.

They had all faded into the grounds, now: Holly sat on a fallen log, and settled down to wait.

**:i:**

Now, I know I said that the action would start this chapter, but I decided to split up it up, since this chapter was _literally _five thousand words when the whole 'break into Ferguson Manor' thing was finished, and after trying to edit this sequence down to three thousand words for the entire morning, I just decided to split the darn thing so I'd have time to get to some beta jobs today too. That means I'll have part two – already written and edited – up later this week. It's hard for me to edit though, since there's shiny action sequences and stuff that I'm terrible at, so this gives me more time to try and edit it anyway.

coughs So. CC much appreciated, and apologies for me not getting Teh Good Stuff here quite yet. :P


	12. Chapter 12

**I N F E R N O**

**- **Dim Aldebarn -

Chapter Twelve

**:i:**

Upon reaching the north wall of Ferguson Manor, Artemis consulted his watch; blueprints of the ground floor were displayed on the pane. There would be two separate points of entry, one for each party: Artemis and Butler would enter first, and coordinate Juliet's entry from there.

They walked down the side of the Manor; the massy construction style, with worn old-growth cedar logs, made it seem as if they were touring a historic site. But then, Ferguson Manor was built a mere one hundred and fifty years before, which was nothing to the European.

Of course, the tourist would not be wearing millions of dollars of equipment, either.

Artemis had used a combination of the official blueprints and some revealing satellite imagery to create the plan of attack; the base of operations was one of the first places he had planned. He had eventually decided on a small room opposite the principal security booth. Though windowless, there was access through the refrigeration unit, which kept the room at a cool temperature for the computer servers.

Of course, access was not perfect. The exact brand of the refrigeration unit was unknown; there was record of three different brands being purchased by the Fergusons, and this particular one could be any of the three. Though the vented to the outside, it would have to be turned off, and several partitions removed, before Butler could enter. That left Artemis, of a far slighter build, to do this.

Butler hoisted him up to the grate; perhaps undignified, but effective. Artemis, a sort of universal tool in hand, rapidly unscrewed the initial grate and slipped inside. There wasn't much room inside the vent, and what room there was was scarce enough; he was forced to crawl on his elbows and knees, and Butler would be reduced to _wiggling_. Hot air, a side product of the refrigeration process, roared through the shaft, threatening to blow Artemis' protective camfoil blanket back outside.

The next partition was what separated the inflow from the room from the outflow outside. When unscrewed, the unit would automatically power off—and would trigger an error alert to the Manor's computer system, _if_ the Fergusons had installed such things. Though it was unlikely—the Manor was a security nightmare—it was always better safe than sorry.

However, even in the state-of-the-art Fowl Manor alert system, it would take about a minute for such a low-risk alert to display. After all, it kept track of the thousands upon thousands of electronically-controlled devices at Fowl Manor, from the security cameras to the septic system to the sprinkler. Thus, at the worst, he had a minute to remove the remaining partitions, lower himself into the server room without injury, and then attach a bug to the unit's computer.

Perhaps Artemis was not a particularly active young man, but he was efficient. He unscrewed and removed the partition with all speed; instantly, the roaring of air stopped. Removing the final grate was far easier, due to the lack of rushing air; he set the grate next to him in the shaft.

Lowering himself seven feet to the floor would be difficult, especially considering that he was currently positioned head-first in the vent, with little room to maneuver. Carefully, he turned himself on his back, and then grabbed the upper sill of the unit with each hand. He began slowly extracting himself from the vent and into the open air. _Just like a sit-up_, he told himself, _just pretend that you can do them—_

—and he was dangling five feet above the floor; his arms were shaking hard, and the camfoil was threatening to slip off. With only the briefest thought of twisted ankles, he let go.

The jar to his knees and ankles was excruciating; he bit back a yelp of pain. Immediately, he made sure that his camfoil blanket was still in place; it had slipped slightly, but it had only exposed him in the direction of the near wall. All things considered, it was Artemis Fowl's greatest feat of physical prowess: a single pull-up.

_There is time for pride later_, he told himself, and considered the next obstacle. The refrigeration unit's computer was very conspicuous, since temperature adjustments had to be done manually.

He had downloaded the troubleshoot guides for the three possible units, and had memorized the necessary pages. After a moment of inspection, Artemis unscrewed a panel to the right of the screen, exposing a tangled network of wires. He selected the one that would run to the security booth next door, and attached his bug.

Physically inconspicuous, the bug would intercept any electronic signals pertaining to an error message, and transmit one of full working order. Of course, he had had them preprogrammed from the safety of the Lear.

This left him with a full ten seconds.

Silence was of the essence: Artemis alerted Butler that the coast was clear with a few taps to the throat patch. Relatively unaltered from Foaly's original, the patch would pick that up as a series of dull thuds. Butler would hear the signal in his earpiece, and follow him through the vent. While he was negotiating the tight passageway, Artemis would make himself at home.

The first thing to do was loop the cameras. He unhooked another bug from his watchband and walked over to the one camera of the room, which could have been from the back corner of any convenience store. The detail would be so grainy that it was unlikely it would even pick up the blur of the camfoil blankets—but again, it was better safe than sorry.

He attached a bug to one of the exposed wires, and then considered the next security threat: the lack of sound from the refrigeration unit. It was a noisy, inefficient thing, and from the outside, any passerby would be able to hear its roar. A lack of such sound would be a cause of alarm, and an investigation would result.

Earlier, he had recorded the refrigeration unit's sound from the outside; though muffled by the wall, it was as close an approximation as he could get. He took another link from his watchband, and delicately pushed an inset in the side. A dull roar emitted from the pea-sized device; he set it near the door.

All immediate security threats attended to, he examined the room more closely. It had been recently remodeled; the concrete walls and floors were clean and bare in the way only newness can be. The room was on the small side, but for its purpose, it was actually quite big. There were only a dozen or so servers, which were placed in the center of the room within a low-slung slotted cabinet. The great masses of cords, a perpetual nightmare of a tangle at Fowl Manor, were neatly bundled, and strung up through a port in the ceiling. Their gentle hum as they went about their ceaseless, redundant tasks could barely be heard through the roar of the refrigerator unit recording.

Butler, though considerably larger than Artemis, dropped down from the vent with ease; Artemis watched the blur do a graceful flip from the floor. They would be keeping their camfoi blankets on, of course, but detecting each other's presence would hardly be difficult in the small room.

Butler went right to inspecting the room for security flaws; the blur moved in a slow circle around the central server table. When satisfied, he sent a signal message using his watch.

Artemis withdrew a small box from his suit—about two inch square—and tapped it gently. It was his most recent version of the infamous C-Cube. The improvements upon the original were numerous, but the most conspicuous was the layout. It quickly unfolded into a sort of small laptop, albeit a laptop with two screens instead of one. A separate keyboard and stylus were also produced.

Artemis set this down as one might set down a book in his lap and perched the slight keyboard on a knee. Using the stylus, he quickly brought the blueprints of Ferguson Manor on one screen, with his modifications and notes, and a detailed outline of the plan on the other.

He tapped his throat patch to get Juliet's attention.

"Yeah?"

Artemis winced; even through his earpiece, she managed to sound unconcerned. He brought Juliet's eye cam view on his panel, and began: "Go to the third window west from the northeast corner of the building."

"Distance?"

"Twenty meters from your current position."

The side of the Manor bobbed up and down in the eye cam view. Artemis, somewhat impatient, picked dust particles from the sleeve of his suit.

"Okay, I'm there. Now what?"

"There should be a window on the second floor, directly overhead. Scale the wall to the left of it."

Juliet's gloves and soles could generate a sort of microspike texture; with the push of a button, they could grip virtually any substance. It made for a somewhat Peter Parker approach to buildings; but short of a microscope, no scratches were detectable, and the camfoil jumpsuit made the risk of exposure slight.

When she had scaled the wall, Artemis relayed the next set of instructions: "The window should be inset by a half meter. Step onto the ledge and give me a view of the locking mechanism."

They knew the brand of window—Diana had found a bill regarding a recent window replacement—but not the exact nature of the locking mechanism by the time they left. However, second-story windows tended to have simple locks, and the security company that covered Ferguson Manor was one that Artemis had dealt with previously.

Juliet obliged him with a view of the lock. After a brief examination, Artemis smiled. The hookup to the security alarm was simplistic. "Take the stud from your right shoulder; second from the top. Open it. There should be a bug within."

While Juliet was unwrapping the bug, Artemis downloaded a program into it that would deal with this particular security system. Rather than be directly attached to the wires, as with most of his bugs, this one would transmit and intercept over an area. Since the window alarm was the only electrical device for a meter around, the bug would affect only it.

Juliet planted the bug on the cross hatch of the window; the patented adhesive would stick to veritably any surface. Glass was nothing. "Bug planted. Now what?"

"Go to the west side of the window. Between the wall and the frame, there should be a narrow gap. Can you see the locking mechanism through it?"

"Yeah. You know, it is absolutely _ridiculous _how easy this is—"

Though privately Artemis agreed, Juliet's little comments were out of place—and irritating. "Mind on the mission, if you will. The vibroblade—you remember how to use it?"

The vibroblade was exactly what it sounded like; a blade that vibrated. It was approximately ten centimeters long when fully extended. The 'blade' was titanium, and would vibrate at extremely high frequencies. In this state, most substances could be cut with relative ease.

"You push the button," Juliet replied, "and then you cut. Not that hard." She demonstrated on the lock, nearly cutting off her hand in the process. "Like that."

Artemis grimaced; a pity there weren't less frivolous Butlers of the proper age. He had a task, however: he hacked into the Ferguson mainframe and accessed the security input. Though he preferred his physical bugs, which were untraceable after they self-destructed, sometimes a bit of hacking was the only alternative.

His proximity to the mainframe was the entire reason why he was inside the Manor, versus outside of it: proximity equaled simplicity, in hacking. Once inside the mainframe, he accessed the security cameras. When he had located the one in Juliet's corridor, he looped the video input so Juliet could pass by without even a blur. "All clear."

"About time," Juliet said, opening the window and slipping inside.

"Go down the hallway and take the second right."

Juliet broke into a soundless jog. The crisp lines of the cedar-paneled corridor bobbed up and down on the screen. Once she took the right, a new hallway presented itself: one leading to the suite of Natalie Ferguson. "Now what?"

Artemis did not reply, instead speculating upon the suite blueprints on the screen. There had been no way to deduce the location of _Girl in Solitude_, from either satellite imagery or even Diana. In short, Juliet would have to sweep the entire seven-hundred-square-foot suite of rooms.

To no matter. He planted some more bugs in the security cameras of the suite, and checked for occupants on the footage. Neither of the Ferguson siblings seemed to be within. When satisfied, he said, "Check the walls, first. See if she's had it hung—as a war trophy, of sorts."

Juliet entered. Though he could only get short, bobbing views of any particular place in the room, he was nevertheless surprised at its contents: the place was a veritable library, with cedar shelves coating every wall, and books stacked two or three deep. There was little else in the room: asides from these shelves, the cedar parquet was bare, and furniture seemed entirely nonexistent.

"No trophies here," Juliet said cheerfully. "Where to next?"

There were three doors branching off from this main room: one he identified as a bathroom, which was a bad place for a painting because of the humidity, and thus very unlikely. The other two appeared to be bedrooms, or media rooms.

"First door on the right."

Juliet bobbed on over to it. The opening of the door revealed a room, similarly lined with bookshelves. However, there was a window in this room, a large one, with an expansive panorama of the mountainsides, and a deep windowseat.

"Go to the window."

"Why? There's no paintings here—"

"_Do it_."

Juliet caught the steely tones in his voice; in all likelihood rolling her eyes, she advanced upon the window and supplied him with a good view. "Happy?"

"Very," Artemis replied smoothly. "Open it."

"It's a _seat_—"

"Have you lost all common sense, Juliet?" Artemis snapped. "Or are you just playing stupid to irritate me?"

Juliet mumbled something incomprehensible under her breath, and bent down. The varnish on the cedar had been worn through on the top of the seat, but also on the edge. As he had thought: it was a lid, which could be opened and closed.

"_Open it_," he repeated.

She did.

Inside were cardboard tubes, the traditional way to store paintings. All had neat Sharpie labels on them:_, Cassandra, Echo, Eurydice, Medusa, Persephone—_

—and _Medea._

He closed his eyes for a moment. What were those other stolen paintings?—the titles all implied the tragic female figure, clearly, a source of fascination for Natalie. What insight he could gain into her character, what _prescience_—

"Take them all," Artemis said.

"There's _six _of them!" Juliet cried out indignantly. "How am I supposed to scale that wall with _six tubes_ in hand?"

"You'll find a way, I'm certain," Artemis replied absently: his mind was already spinning with the thought of not only _Girl in Solitude_, but five more variations on the theme of Natalie Ferguson—

Juliet sighed melodramatically and scooped up the tubes. Since they were perfectly visible, she would have to make her exit quickly to avoid detection.

Artemis turned towards Butler. "The vent, if you will."

Butler nodded, and went to it. He would climb through the vent to the other side, then lower a small rope for Artemis, so he could climb up to the vent on his own. Artemis would follow a few moments later. It was a minimal security risk, and he would have to secure the outdoors for both Artemis and Juliet anyway. He gave it little thought.

While Butler was managing that, Artemis began deleting the traces of their little visit: as Juliet exited the windowseat room, he began deleting the looping programs on each of the cameras. That way, their little visit would go unnoticed for long enough that they could return to Fowl Manor in peace.

Lost in his programs, he almost ignored Juliet's warning cry: "_Artemis—!_"

He checked the screen. Before Juliet, in the doorway of the suite, was Natalie Ferguson, pale eyes fixed on the levitating tubes.

"D'Arvit," Artemis swore, uncharacteristically but quite appropriately. His mind raced; any moment, she would snap out of it and sound the alarm. "Knock her out."

"The paintings—"

"Drop them!"

Juliet did; as they clattered to the ground, she lunged forward and captured the girl in a headlock. Before the girl could even scream, her head fell limply forward onto her chest, rendered unconscious. "Now what?"

His mind was spinning, as if flung into the Tevatron—"Can you carry her?"

"_Duh_."

"Return the paintings," Artemis quickly replied. "We can come back for them later. Bring her out with you through the window, Butler will help—"

There was a clicking sound. Looking up, Artemis suddenly found himself faced with a spectacle he hadn't seen in a decade:

Looking down the barrel of a gun.

There was the sound of thunder, and Artemis could only fall…

**:i:**

Sorry about how long this took! I've had this typed up for almost a month now, but I simply cannot write this sort of thing. Sorry, I'm just terrible at these action-subterfuge stuff. I had to get it over with, so from here on out, the action will not have to do with unlikely technology and long winded explanations. My only excuse is… well, the more I tried to edit this, the longer and more unlikely it all got, so I figured I had to stop myself before it got too over-the-top.

Asides from that… er, the cliffie? The next chapter should be up next week Saturday, very much on schedule, since I already have that one typed up, and it's much more friendly to edit. Besides being full of fun Fergusonness and How Someone Actually OutsmartedArtemis and all, without being an actual genius and... I've said too much. coughs Yeah. XD

CC much appreciated – especially if you can help me figure out how to write this sort of scene!


	13. Chapter 13

**I N F E R N O**

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Thirteen

**:i:**

Butler was on the second story when he heard the gunshot.

The siblings met each other's eyes, and the reaction was immediate.

Juliet tossed Natalie out the window; Butler caught her and slung her over his shoulder in one smooth motion. Her head slapped against the wall, but a little concussion never hurt anyone.

With that, he jumped. Gravity does not make exceptions for Butlers, however much it may appear to the contrary. Butler fell twenty feet to the ground, landing with a sort of grace that might have disgraced Madame Ko, but, all things considered, wasn't bad for a man in his upper sixties.

His ankles jarred sharply upon impact, and his knees folded. It would hurt like Hell tomorrow—but for now, there was only the cold clarity of thought:

_The Principle is in danger_.

He dropped Natalie to the ground, a mere rag doll. The bruises wouldn't be pretty, but he didn't care. Bruises built character.

He vaulted himself to the vent opening, and pushed himself a half meter into the shaft. The opposite wall of the room was visible through the shaft; but he could hear nothing further from the room, nothing besides the roar of the refrigerator unit recording.

He paused. Inside—a bodyguard could be waiting with a round for whoever came through the vent first—the vent could close behind him and he would be trapped, trapped like Artemis—

Possibilities.

No matter what the case, Butler knew he could not afford to enter the room.

A dead Butler would be useless to his Principle.

Slowly, Butler slid back out of the vent, and dropped to the ground.

Juliet was there, waiting, waiting for him and waiting for an answer to that most terrible question. When he turned and faced the forest, her eyes filled with tears. "Dom—Artemis—we can't just _leave_ him there—"

He gave his sister a long, hard look. "We aren't," he replied slowly. "We'll come back for him—"

"_When_?" Juliet demanded. "When he's already bled to death on the floor, or after his body has been strung up on the Manor's gates for display? We don't even know if he's alive _now—_"

She was turning back towards the vent; Butler grabbed her by the shoulder. "Juliet, whoever goes into that room will be _shot _and _killed_. They're _expecting_ us, do you understand? We're useless to him _dead_."

Juliet's face was twisted in helpless rage. "So, we'll wait until they're fully fortified and surprise is no longer our advantage."

Butler searched her eyes; the tears were spilling over onto her cheeks. He remembered what it was like, that first failure… "We wait until we can think clearly," he said eventually, and released her.

Juliet clenched her fists; but her shoulders were slumped, and there was defeat in the tears trickling down her face. She thought she was killing him, through inaction…

Butler slung Natalie's body over his shoulder, and began to jog back to the Lear. Perhaps they were, perhaps Artemis would die, perhaps he would hate himself in the weeks and years to come… but inaction was the only way, and Butler could only follow it.

**:i:**

Artemis awoke slowly, as anyone might wake on a lazy Sunday morning.

When he had summoned the energy, he opened his eyes. _Strange_, he thought, blinking at the ceiling,_ there are no metal ceilings in Fowl Manor—_

There was a sharp throbbing in his head; and it all came rushing back.

_The paintings—variations on Medea Atreus—_

—_Natalie—Natalie, she's mine now, she's **mine**—_

—_Aspyrtus, Ryan—he's coming, he's coming for me—_

—_he's **here**—_

He sat up sharply; there was a rush of dizziness from the blood loss. _Blood loss—_he had been shot in the leg, upper thigh, and the blood loss—he had gone into shock—he could have _died—_

Panic added a sharp flavor to his thoughts. It was a new sensation, something Artemis was not acquainted with, something Artemis didn't know how to deal with…

The world was tipping about like some sort of cosmic seesaw, the walls, the chair, the door—

—_the door_. The thought of escape rippled through his mind, and he tried to stand. The world bucked, and he gripped the cot to retain his balance.

The door was across the room, some four meters.

When he regained equilibrium, he let go of the cot, and made his way across the room. The walls spun, but the door remained fixed in his vision. After an eternity of wobbling steps, he leaned heavily against it, gasping for breath; the heavy blood loss had affected more than his sensory perception.

After a moment, he reached downwards, seeking the doorknob…

…and there was no doorknob.

His hand scrabbled about, searching the entirety of the door. No doorknob, no exit, no escape. Simple as that, simple as the truth of the matter.

Distantly, he heard footsteps, footsteps from outside the door…

…_he's coming_…

He smiled bitterly. He had never even _considered_ that petty suspicion, he had flung it aside, since intuition was not fit for a _Fowl_…

The footsteps stopped outside the door. Artemis staggered over to the cot and lay down again, pretending to sleep. A petty tactic, perhaps, but at the least, it would allow him a few moments to clear his head. It was all a rush of blood to his head so far, hardly the reaction he had expected of himself.

He heard the door open, creaking slightly. Steps—one, two, three and a stop, three steps closer to the bed, three steps closer to _him_... He heard the rustle of cloth, and a clicking sound—like the cocking of a gun. "Get up."

Bearing in mind what the last shot had cost him, he obliged, sitting up in bed. Facing him was a gun, gleaming in the harsh fluorescent lighting; either very new, or rarely used. After getting beyond his momentary, albeit natural fixation on the barrel of the gun, he examined the person pointing the gun.

His hair hadn't been cut in several months, at the least; it fell to a most unprofessional length at his chin, but retained an awkward, but very natural sense of aesthetics. This obscured much of his facial structure, though nothing beyond those fierce dark eyes and circumstance was required to identify him as Ryan Ferguson—or the man-child Medea had called 'Aspyrtus'.

Ryan was holding the gun in an easy one-handed grasp; the other was hooked on a belt loop. He was going for a cavalier air, it seemed. "So, _you're _the mighty Artemis Fowl she's always talking about."

"She?"

His fingers drummed an impatient cadence against the barrel of the gun. "Don't play stupid with me, Fowl. You and your little cronies came for her, didn't they?"

Artemis considered it for a moment; but it wasn't a question he wanted to think about. "No, I didn't come for her," he replied. "I came for the painting."

The fingers drummed faster; Artemis could make out the heavy beat of _Ride of the Valkyries_. "What?"

Artemis smiled condescendingly. "Let's make a deal. I won't play stupid with you, and you won't play stupid with me."

Ryan moved the gun over a few centimeters, and fired. A large dent was created in the metal siding of the room, and the bullet fell to the cot. "_What painting_?"

Artemis' brow arched in surprise; in all calculations of character, he had assumed Ryan had known all this. Then again, he hadn't pictured Ryan as a psychotic madman, either. "I am speaking of the Fragonard, of course. Recently stolen from the Louvre?"

Ryan's face curled in disdain. "I don't give a damn about some goddamn art stolen from some goddamn_ loo_." His fingers began drumming again on the side of the gun. "Now, what does Natalie have to do with any of this?"

"It was your charming _sister_ that stole it from the Louvre." Artemis spread out his hands in a gesture of peace. "I am merely trying to retrieve it."

The fingers paused in their drumming. "You're just after some fucking painting?"

"Correct."

Ryan examined Artemis intently for a few moments; then moved the gun and fired. At the opposite side of Artemis' head, a parallel dent was created, and another bullet landed on the cot. When the echoes had faded, he grinned sardonically. "Three strikes and you're out."

Artemis eyed the gun warily. Guns had not been good for his health lately. "What is it you want to know?"

"Natalie. Why." The fingers drummed faster. "_Why_."

"Presumably, she's on her way to Interpol headquarters right now to await trial," Artemis bluffed, then smiled coldly. "Art thievery is a hefty offense when it involves the Louvre."

Ryan seemed to consider this; his fingers moved on to the Fifth. "You are going to stop this transport, _or else_."

Artemis considered. 'or else', usually an empty threat, had all sorts of weight here. "It will require a phone call."

Using his spare hand, Ryan withdrew a sat phone from his pocket, and tossed it on the cot. "No funny business, or you and Natalie can both go to Hell."

Artemis nodded, and grabbed the phone. Quickly, he dialed a number—Butler's number, a number he had only used once before… "Hello?"

The reaction was calm on the other line; Butler knew full well to expect, a phone call from a captive. "Yes?"

"Keep Ferguson _controlled_," Artemis said quickly. "Do not get authorities involved."

There was a moment of silence. "Understood, sir."

Artemis snapped the phone shut, and tossed it on the ground near Ryan's feet. "Done. Now—"

"—you will lie down again on your cot until I leave," Ryan interrupted. His fingers drummed faster.

Artemis obliged. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ryan reach down and grab the sat phone; and then he left, shutting the door behind him.

It was only then Artemis allowed a word to escape: "D'Arvit."

**:i:**

The Lear Jet was on the move.

Butler had been the one to make the decision. "They will be looking for the Jet," he had told them, "and once they find us, there will be nothing we can do for Artemis."

They had both argued; Holly even cried a bit. In the end, however, they could only go along with him. Logic trumps emotion when it comes to being a Butler.

Holly was the one piloting; it was the only thing she was good for, in that sulky mood. Blasting apart cumulus clouds did the heart much good. Butler was patiently working his way through the airport underbelly to secure a hanger for the Lear Jet under the pretense that the Lear was to be "going into the public market". False, of course, but no one cared after a bit of financial lubricant was applied.

That left Juliet to deal with Natalie.

While Natalie was still unconscious, they had cleared Artemis' private quarters out of anything "dangerous". After, they had installed a makeshift lock on the door, and assigned Juliet to check on her every few minutes to make sure she didn't try anything clever like escape.

Juliet grimaced. _Natalie_. It was herfault that they were even in this mess! _She_ had been the one to steal the painting, _she_ had been the one to deal with Monsieur, _she_ had been the one to be to burst in on her like that—

And she wasn't even all that _interesting_.

All she had done so far was sleep. Juliet knew she had awakened, but only because she moved from the floor to the bed. Else, it would have been as if she was just a regular feature of Artemis' room—of either sort.

She looked through the window in the door. The girl was wearing the same clothes as she had when she had first seen the levitating tubes: a pair of too-big, too-old khakis, and a loose blue blouse that gave her the vague appearance of a manikin. The only thing that detracted from this image was her face: a bright red cut shredded its way across her cheek, the only remnant of the rough treatment she had suffered in her unconscious state. Holly hadn't bothered with healing it, yet; Juliet was willing to bet that Holly would just let it scar over and ruin the girl's otherwise smooth skin.

But—there was still Artemis.

_Artemis_…

She had nearly forgotten.

Artemis had wanted Natalie in captivity—he had wanted to question her—he had wanted to _understand _her—

Some temptation rose within her. Butler—Butler didn't want anything to do with Natalie, he thought she would be useless to their plans—Holly was itching for the excuse to render her unconscious again—

No one had tried _talking _to her yet.

Juliet stood. She hadn't taken off her catsuit yet; she moved with a sort of oily grace towards the door. She undid the latch—primitive, but effective—and entered.

Natalie was curled on the bed facing the wall, like a child. _As a child_; at seventeen, no one really knew what was going on. Slow, even breaths made her slight form rise and fall slightly, and her body was otherwise still.

Both were misleading; it was only the illusion of sleep.

Juliet closed the door behind her; being soundproof, it would prevent the others from overhearing. "Wake up, sleeping beauty."

Natalie rolled over and observed Juliet calmly with those pale eyes. Strange, really, how they just observed so serenely, so coolly, that their situations could have been flipped, Juliet the captive, and Natalie the captor…

Juliet shivered inwardly, but she retained her confidant exterior. "Now, look here Natalie, a friend of mine has been taken captive by your family, and we—"

"Medea."

Juliet blinked. "_Excuse_ me?"

Natalie continued with that long, unblinking stare. "It's _Medea_. Not _Natalie_."

Juliet waved her hand flippantly. "Whatever. The point is, you need to cooperate with us—"

Natalie had rolled back over, facing the wall. Angry, Juliet moved to flip her over, to teach her some respect, but then—then, she was impaled by that _gaze_, long and solemn and cold and confidant and calculating and tranquil and a thousand other adjectives, a thousand other adjectives she had once used to describe Artemis…

Juliet left as quickly as she could, and shut the door behind her. The latch slammed shut.

As she resumed her post, she could only blink back tears of helpless rage.

**:i:**

So, Fergusonness. :P I don't think is as good as it should have been, but it was fun for me, at least... snuck a lot of forshadowing in there. :D

In any case, I was having problems with Ryan's characterization, which was why this is late. New chappie sometime next weekish.


End file.
